


The Standing Dead

by standinginanicedress



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Celebrity, Angst, Celebrity AU, Fame, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Past Abuse, Past Domestic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:03:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 166,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27662432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standinginanicedress/pseuds/standinginanicedress
Summary: “Tell me you’re not seriously with Derek Hale.”Stiles pretends to check that the guitar is in tune (of course it is, they tune all of these before he shows up), and then makes a face like he has no idea what Scott is talking about. To sell it, he says as much out loud. “Who?”“Who?” Scott’s eyebrows disappear into his hairline, his mouth falling open in shock that Stiles would be so bold as to deny it. “Stiles, that guy is an asshole.”“That’s fine,” Stiles waves it off, “because I’m not with him, so it doesn’t matter.”
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 445
Kudos: 1374





	1. Drowning

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, you’ll have to forgive me for not having updated my most recent fic in a long time. I don’t normally take so long to update, but that one is proving itself particularly challenging. I know what I want to write, but actually doing it is another story. I don’t know when it will be done, so maybe don’t start that one quite yet. This one on the other hand, I have a much firmer grip on. I’d have waited, but I like this one a lot and wanted to get it up. 
> 
> Secondly, I’ve wanted to write one like this for sooo long. I could never find the right tone for this exact story and the theme, but I finally got it where I wanted it. I also completely forgot there was a canonical character named Matt. I realized it long after I’d committed to the OMC name. And like, being an evil villain works for the canon character too, but for the record, that is not the Matt I imagined when I wrote this LMFAO!! I forget like 99% of what happened in canon. 
> 
> Lastly, I get a lot of questions about Tax Evasion. Initially I had said I’d reupload that fic over my dead body. Then I figured I’d screw with it and fix it because it’s good practice. It turns out the original copies of it are lost forever. They’re on my old laptop which hasn’t totally croaked, but is as close to being completely dead as a machine can be without actually being dead. You try to load up google chrome and the thing shuts down. I wanted to edit it, change the titles, finish it - but I can’t even access it to do that because of a twisted web of Microsoft accounts and passwords that I won’t bore you with. So.... he’s dead, boys. There are plenty of fics I’d love to put back up. But they’ve all met the same fate. In the arms of the angels, fly away from here, and so on.

“Derek Hale apparently wants to meet with you.”

Stiles pulls the pillow off of his face, squinting against the sun streaming in through the wide open windows across the room. Lydia is hovering over him with a twist to her mouth, clutching what looks like a tabloid in her left hand, a coffee in her right.

“Derek Hale,” he repeats, and Lydia lifts a single eyebrow. “The…movie guy?”

“The movie guy.”

“Like, the big one.”

Without another word, Lydia holds the magazine out for Stiles to take it. He nearly doesn’t – after all, she is the one who trained him, long ago it seems like now, to pretend those things do not exist. All the same, he grits his teeth and takes it, appraising the front cover with a deep sigh through his nose.

Apparently, Selena Gomez just had her third pregnancy scare, two people Stiles couldn’t pick out of a lineup are getting a divorce, and he and Derek Hale really hit it off at the SAG awards. 

“Huh,” he examines the tiny picture of himself standing within three feet of Derek Hale the Movie Guy almost as though he’s looking at two strangers; for all intents and purposes, he is. “I forgot that I met him. Though, met is a strong word.” 

In reality, Derek Hale had been walking past him and recognized him. He said hello and Stiles had been drinking too much, so god knows what he said in return. The memory itself is as fuzzy as if it had happened ten years ago and not just last week – it’s no surprise he had completely forgotten about it like it had happened to someone else. 

But, he does always have the American public to remind him of every single encounter he has with every living person on earth. 

“Well, he did not forget that he met you,” she reaches down and rips the magazine out of Stiles’ clutches before Stiles can even open up the front cover to flip through it. It crinkles in her hand, and then it gets tucked underneath her arm. It will be gone from this apartment like it never was, he’s sure of at least that much. “His people reached out.” 

“Oh,” Stiles blinks. Honestly, this takes him aback a bit. Not just because to Stiles this encounter never even occurred, but also because…well. It’s Derek Hale. 

He’s most known for starring in those movies that were based on a series of video games – Stiles honestly forgets the name of them, but they were a big deal. There were three movies, if he remembers correctly, and every living soul on earth, perhaps aside from Stiles, has seen them before. Stiles may not have seen the films, but he at least is current enough to know that Derek Hale was a big deal from that day forward. He’s type cast, as far as Stiles can tell; as in he’s always punching someone or running around or jumping off of buildings, but it seems to work for him. People are constantly talking about him, be it positive or negative, and there is not a day in journalism that goes by where his name isn’t being brought up. 

So, color Stiles surprised that the great action star Derek Hale would want anything to do with piddly little Stiles Stilinski. “Did they say why?”

Lydia levels him with a cool stare. “I can assume.” 

“Oh, no,” Stiles makes a face as he sits all the way up from the couch, settling into a fully upright position around a laugh. “Give me a fucking break. That guy?”

“He’s been with men before,” is what she says, like it’s all a non-issue anyway. Stiles gapes at her – though, she’s not exactly wrong. It’s a huge part of the reason Derek Hale is even half as big of a deal as he is; he’s a ginormous movie star of the straight-guy variety, and yet, he’s been known to fuck a dude or two. It sets him apart, and it makes the stories about him a lot more interesting. Stiles would know a thing or two about what it’s like to attribute at least some of his success to his sexuality. 

“Not men like me,” he scoffs, again, but she just blinks at him like she thinks he’s being idiotic. “I’m not his type. He probably wants me to, fuck I don’t know,” he waves his hand in the air, “write on the soundtrack for his first feel-good drama movie or some shit like that.” 

“Your naïveté never ceases to astound me,” she snaps at him, like she’s mad about it. “I’m only relaying the information. You can take his email, or you can just forget about it. Either way.” 

Stiles purses his lips and looks out the windows; the beach, the ocean, the sunset beyond. When he was a kid, he used to daydream about being rich enough to live somewhere like this place, right there on the water, the sound of seagulls the only noise for miles. In reality, there are constant parties and kids screaming and sirens and endless games of volleyball in the sand. But still. You can’t possibly beat that view, even if it is on occasion obstructed by college kids getting shit faced on beach towels. 

When he was a kid, he couldn’t have ever imagined someone like Derek Hale ever campaigning for his attention – be it romantic (extremely doubtful) or friendly (even more doubtful) or business related (unlikely, but the only viable option). But, the truth is, no matter what he thinks about it, people like Derek have been campaigning for his attention for years, now. Maybe not quite to the level of celebrity that Derek Hale has, but pretty fucking close. Stiles is no household name, he’s not on commercials day in and day out, and he’s not the biggest name in music, not by a long shot. 

But he’s dated some big name assholes and written about it, so people know who he is. Sometimes he’s mused about in tabloids, half the time he’s out he’s photographed by paparazzi depending on where he is, and he’s recognizable after a double take. Maybe he is being naïve to think that someone like Derek, with all the choices in the world, would never pick Stiles out of the line-up. 

Or, maybe he’s just being realistic. 

“I’ll take the e-mail,” he mutters, and Lydia smirks at him like she had expected nothing more and nothing less. “Fuck it, what’s the harm?” 

“That’s the spirit,” she reaches into her jacket pocket and produces a sticky note, neon pink with a short scrawl of her familiar handwriting across one side of it. As she hands it out to him, she flashes him a sly grin. “Worst comes to worst, it’ll be a good record.”

Stiles hates it when she says shit like that. As though his life and the people in it and everything that happens to him is only fodder for an album and not his actual lived experience. As though all his relationships are good, even the truly horrible ones, because hey – at least he got a song or two out of the deal. Never mind the trauma or the manipulation or the loss of sleep or the way Stiles is genuinely convinced his life is a revolving door of people who want nothing but to be featured on the next album.

He takes the post it and looks at what’s written; a gmail, for god’s sake. It’s always funny when ridiculously famous people have normal things like g-mail accounts or stamp cards from coffee places. “I bet he’s an asshole.”

“Surely he is,” Lydia waves this off and turns to walk away, to leave Stiles alone in his perfectly cultivated pit of misery. “I thought that was your type, anyway.” 

She’s out the door before Stiles can think of a response to that – truthfully, he doubts he’d be able to come up with one no matter how much time he was given. The reality is that holy shit, his type probably is assholes. Look at his fucking track record. Literally. 

The issue is, whether Derek Hale is an asshole or not, there’s no way that’s what he’s after. Stiles can’t imagine what else a man like him would be after, but it still cannot honestly be that. He holds the email in his hand for what feels like a long time, sitting in the fading sunlight, the distant calls of people having fun, the silence in his own space. 

He wishes he could remember what, if anything, he had said to Derek Hale that night at the SAG awards. Frankly, it was only by happenstance that either of them were there to begin with. Famous as he is, Derek Hale is not the type to be receiving accolades outside the realm of what MTV has to offer him, and Stiles isn’t even a fucking actor. Still, he was there because he was invited and because one of the shows nominated for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble Cast in a Drama Series used a song of his in their ending credits after every episode. 

Derek being there is its own mystery. Maybe they’ll let just about anyone in, these days. 

With a heaving sigh, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and navigates to his email. He types Derek’s address into its proper place and then doesn’t think twice as he starts typing up an introduction. 

_Hello, Derek Hale, apparently we met at the SAG awards. As I’m sure will come as no surprise to you whatsoever if you had anything longer than a three second interaction with me, I was sloshed out of my head at that thing and was in no position to be introducing myself to anyone. If I was rude, I apologize. I also apologize for having no memory of this interaction having taken place. In any event, I was told you were interested in talking to me again. So, here it is._

_This is Stiles Stilinski, by the way._

It likely comes as no surprise to anyone that Stiles was drunk at yet another function – too public, too many cameras, and too much of Stiles making an ass out of himself. Whether it’s an actual problem or just another way to sell his upcoming record, Stiles isn’t entirely sure. All he knows is that he’s been miserable, was miserable before the breakup, was dreadfully miserable after it, was inconsolably miserable writing the record, and even now that it’s done and coming out and the grieving period was over long ago, he remains miserable. 

Bad, toxic people will do that to a person. The aftershocks are almost worse than what happened in the first place. 

So, case and point. Stiles, drunk out of his mind at an awards show while in an expensive outfit, making an asshole out of himself in front of the biggest movie stars in the world? Not exactly front page news. Well, it was. But it didn’t surprise anyone. 

All it did was bring the anticipation for his new record up to a fever pitch, mind the pun. People cannot wait, not for one single solitary moment, to hear what he has to say about his most recent and most public and most horrible breakup. They’re chomping at the bit, and Stiles gets it. He would want to know, too. Christ, there surely have been enough pictures of him looking absolutely wrecked. There surely have been enough articles about his partying and his lack of concern for his own well being. The murmurs that he won’t even tour the record because it’s too hard.

If Stiles had any say in the matter, he wouldn’t tour. Unfortunately for him but fortunately for everyone else, he has no say in the matter. The dates were decided, given to him, scheduled into his brain long before he ever tried to say he didn’t think he could take it. But, Stiles won’t be that person who gets everything he ever wanted and then complains about it. So, he won’t. He’ll do the tour, he’ll e-mail fucking Derek Hale. 

Whatever keeps them interested, Lydia would say. Whatever sells the most.

**

_Hello, Stiles Stilinski. We did meet at the SAG awards. You were very drunk. You told me you liked my work in Death by Sunrise. The movies, as I told you that night, are called Dead by Sunrise. You weren’t rude, you were just a bit curt._

_I am interested in talking to you again. I hear you have a place in New York – are you there now? I live here, as well._

_This is Derek Hale, by the way._

The e-mail is time stamped three o’clock in the morning, which Stiles finds both bizarre and intriguing. What possible business would a man like Derek Hale be conducting at three in the morning? Either way, Stiles had been dead asleep after drinking half a bottle of wine and watching The Real Housewives until passing out on the couch, while the waves crashed against the shore and the moon rose in the sky. 

It’s not until the next morning, bright and early, that he reads the email in question. He’s surprised. He had expected some nonsense about how Derek likes his work and wants it in his next film, or some nonsense about how rude Stiles was to him that night and he took umbrage, or just…nonsense, in general. Derek’s e-mail was quick and to the point, like he had known long ago what exactly he wanted to say to Stiles, way before he ever knew if he’d ever get a chance to say it at all. 

_I’m in Malibu. I’ll be in New York next week, though? If you’ll still be there by then. A guy like you is probably pretty busy. Can I ask what all this is about, or should I just guess and go with you want to use my music for something? In which case I’m not the right person to talk to, believe it or not. There’s a whole team of people who decide what to do with what I make, so they’d be your best bet_. 

Unbelievably, in spite of the time of Derek’s first email, his response comes within the hour. Stiles is still eating cereal and drinking a breakfast mimosa when his phone buzzes with the notification. He leans over, sees Derek’s name, and blinks rapidly. Huh. 

_I will still be in New York next week. I think your apartment is in Tribeca, the same as mine. I don’t want to use your music for something. I want to meet you again, that’s all. What day works best for you?_

“Jesus Christ,” Stiles says out loud, pushing his phone away from himself and blinking out across his empty kitchen, his empty apartment, his entire empty life, for all intents and purposes. Lydia had actually been right; this guy wants to fuck Stiles. It’s obvious. If Stiles was as drunk as he thinks he was, he probably not only got the movie title wrong, but did so deliberately and with a scoff and an eye roll because he’s been known to be a bit pretentious. He likely came off as an unbelievable ass and an even bigger dick. Someone like Derek must be used to having his feet licked, people worshipping him day in and day out.

Some little rat like Stiles Stilinski sneering at him should’ve sent him into a rage. Instead, he’s here in Stiles’ e-mail practically panting. It might be the champagne talking, but Stiles actually laughs, then quickly slaps his hand over his mouth to stifle it, as though anyone is watching. Someone could be, for all he knows. 

This is a bad idea. Stiles is in no place, none what so fucking ever, to be interacting with someone who wants to fuck him. The worst days of his life are still happening, as far as he’s concerned. The album is out in two weeks. The first single has been charting. Baseball season starts almost as soon as the album comes out, which was…on purpose, for his part, because he’d been hoping the promo tour and the morning shows and the album launch and the never ending circle of hell would be enough of a distraction to drown it all out. 

But, then again. Stiles has not been touched by another human being in seven months. He has been grabbed aggressively by his security, yes. He has been shoved and nearly knocked over by annoying guys with cameras, yes. But touched? Like touched, touched? It’s just been him and his shower for what seems like an eternity, now, and this is…Derek Hale. He’s famous for being in shitty movies that make a lot of money, and also for being hotter than the surface of the sun. Let’s not mince words, here. He’s a sex dream type of guy, which is why Stiles had been reluctant to believe he’d wanted anything to do with him in that way to begin with. 

Stiles dated a famous movie star, before. He hooked up with a big shot producer and had sex with one of those retired boy band guys in a WeHo bathroom, and he dated, for a long time, one of the biggest athletes in the world. It mystifies even himself how his self esteem could possibly be so low. 

But then, he remembers. It was beaten out of him over the course of two years of relentless put-downs and emotional manipulations and gaslighting. Anyone wanting anything to do with him, after all that, is just not possible. He says as much on the record. 

He looks at his half empty bottle of champagne. The few Froot Loops still floating in his pink milk. His empty apartment. The ever crushing loneliness and misery that has been his only companion for the past year. 

_How about Wednesday night? At my place? I’ve got a great view and also a ton of takeout menus._

**

Lydia is bizarrely pleased with the information that Stiles is meeting Derek Hale. She smirks and leans back in her desk chair, all haughty as she spins from side to side and likely can’t help from imagining the sight of the two of them fucking each other in Stiles’ bedroom. She is fantasizing about all the ways this could only help Stiles’ career, imagining that Derek is a dick who will be mean which of course will make Stiles want him extra bad, and they’ll fuck and date. And Derek will be this terrible ego who mocks Stiles’ music, his life, his friends, everything about him, and they’ll break up and Stiles will cry and the next thing any of them know, the next album will be coming out and the next tour and the next torment for Stiles to endure.

The body from Stiles’ last failed relationship isn’t even cold yet. But here she goes, already.

The New York apartment is one of Stiles’ favorite places to be. He had always loved New York City, growing up as a lonely kid in Northern California with big city dreams, but god knows he’d never be able to cut it here if not for his security team and the cameras and the fact that nothing happens here without eight other people knowing about it. The view really is incredible. He had picked all the furniture out, the rugs, the art, the decorations, the kitchen, the appliances, the bathroom, all of it – it reminds him of what it was like to be him when he was twenty years old. 

Back then, he was hot off the heels of his second record. He had his whole life ahead of him, was making more money than he knew what to do with, and was making his dream come true. His headlining tour was a huge success, the album itself was a 7.5 on Pitchfork, Grammy nominated and ultimately Grammy award winning, and so, the apartment reminds him of being that person. 

Now, he’s twenty-six and miserable and the bedroom reminds him of someone who once pushed him so hard against the closet doors that twenty-year-old him had picked out that he had bruises all over the side of his arm for a week that he had to cover up. He stands with his bag in the doorway and looks in at the bedroom and it’s all he can see. The closet door, the curtains drawn up tight, the bed. 

With a sigh, he flicks the light on and illuminates bad memories. He dumps the bag onto the foot of the bed and then climbs up to sit on the edge of it, clasping his hands between his knees. What he wouldn’t give to be twenty again. Before all that bullshit happened, before he realized he had signed a contract that was going to suck him dry no matter what the consequence to his mental health. 

He had told Lydia and his entire team that what happened between him and that fucking guy was…beyond anything he has the balls to write on a record. He had written the songs, yes, and been through the whole ordeal with work to show for it, yes, but he never once thought he would be putting it out there into the world. He had thought, I cannot do this. I cannot get on stage every night and say that these things happened to me, I cannot do it. And most idiotically of all, he had thought they would support him and tell him of course you don’t have to do that, Stiles, we’ll post-pone the album, we’ll do whatever we have to until you’re ready, anything you need. 

Stiles had signed off on 6 albums in twelve years. There was no wiggle room. The record was coming out, as it was, on the decided release date. He was touring the album. He was promoting the album. He was doing magazine covers. He was going to awards shows. Whether he liked it or not. Whether he could mentally do it, or not. 

And it really fucking sucks. He doesn’t have any friends. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. 

What sucks the most of all is that, actually, he really loves this apartment. Loved, maybe, and past tense because now it’s filled with some of the worst memories of his life. He had sold his other two properties, the LA house and the Nashville apartment, because he couldn’t stand them anymore. This one, he couldn’t let go of, no matter what. 

In the bathroom, he leans against the door jamb and looks in at the shower. The tiles. The mirror. There is a song on the album about this room. He frowns and hugs his arms tighter against himself, closing his eyes for a moment. He wishes that when he wrote things down, it got them out of his head. Instead, all it does is immortalize them forever, force him to sing them again and again until he’s numb to it, listening to people sing them back to him. 

It’s sick, but he almost can’t wait to go on tour and sing this song until he can’t feel it anymore. This is the thought that propels him to go into the kitchen and get a drink, hovering there in silence, sipping and staring out his window into the city.

**

Derek Hale is miraculously on time. Like, down to the second, almost. The clock on Stiles’ stove reads 7:59 PM, and the second it flicks to 8:00, he hears the elevator ding and the muffled voices of his own security and Derek Hale’s interacting with one another. Stiles is already drinking wine, leaning against his kitchen island, imagining that down below on the street there were pictures snapped of Derek arriving at the notorious New York apartment of Stiles Stilinski. Everyone who’s ever set foot in here has been photographed arriving; it’s part of the deal when you live in the city, Stiles guesses.

He wonders, briefly, what people will say about Derek Hale of all possible people on earth coming to pay Stiles a visit. Probably not very nice things. Stile should be used to it by now. 

There’s no knock on his front door – it just opens and then Boyd is sticking his head in, frowning at Stiles and his wine. “Uh, your eight o’clock is here.” 

“You don’t have to say it like I had such a packed schedule,” he quips, placing his wine glass down on the island and crossing his arms over his chest. “It’s Derek Hale.” 

Stiles had to tell Boyd it was going to be Derek Hale literally hours ago, because the guy needs to know about anyone who wants to come within fifty feet of him, especially in his own home. Still, Boyd looks surprised as he swings open the door and the man himself is standing there all clean shaven and rich looking, as though he had half suspected Stiles were twisting his arm. 

In person, Derek is even more good looking. He walks into the living room and looks immaculate in the lighting, like a magazine ad come to life – he glows, almost, in the way that only famous people can truly manage to do. His skin is perfect, his clothes perfect, his smile perfect, everything about him, head to toe. That’s the kind of famous he is. 

Stiles is famous in a very…specific type of a way. Like, yes, he works out and yes he gets his skin attended to and yes his closet is put together by a stylist. But he still at least looks like a normal human person. He gets a zit every now and again, let’s put it that way. 

But Derek. No way. He has not a single blemish anywhere on his body, Stiles is certain of that. 

“You found the place.”

“Actually, most people know where your apartment is,” he says, walking into the kitchen so they’re only three feet apart. It’s unnerving, the way he commands a room. It’s like permission to do whatever he wants has been granted already. “You should really think about moving.” 

“Bah,” he waves his hand, and then he crosses his arms over his chest again and smirks. “So, you’ve come to kick my ass.”

Derek seems confused, and then he makes a face like he doesn’t find it very funny. 

“It’s all I’ve ever seen you do on film, so what else do I expect?”

Instead of gracing that with a response, Derek removes his jacket and drapes it over one of Stiles’ bar stools – then, he pushes up the sleeves of his sweater to reveal tan arms, veiny, thick. Stiles swallows and looks away, focusing instead on Derek’s face. Which, frankly, is almost worse. 

“You want something to drink? I’ve got wine,” he holds up his own glass as evidence, and Derek tracks the movement with his eyes, “and beer. And liquor. I’ve got a bar, let’s leave it at that.” 

Derek shrugs. “I’ll have what you’re having.”

“Downward spiral red wine,” he snaps his fingers and points, “you got it.”

It’s quiet for a moment, as Stiles moves to reach into his cabinet and pull down another wine glass, closing it with a gentle click, moving back to the island where the open bottle sits with the cork stuffed back inside of it. He pops it open and begins to pour. Derek says, “downward spiral, huh?” 

“So they say,” Stiles finishes the pour, and gently nudges it across the marble to Derek, who picks it up instantly. “Let’s just cut to the chase, though – what could you possibly want to do with me?” 

Derek sips. He swallows. Somehow, he maintains Stiles’ eye contact. “You were really kind of an asshole to me the other night.” 

“If it makes you feel any better, I’ve really been kind of an asshole to everyone for months,” he grins apologetically, and then says the apology out loud, for good measure. “I am sorry, though. I’ve never even seen your movies, if it’s any consolation.” 

“It isn’t, actually. You’re being rude again.” 

“I’m sorry,” he holds both hands out, and sighs through his nose. 

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” he swishes his wine around, and then looks back up to meet Stiles’ eyes again. “I’m good friends with Josh Perry.”

Stiles nearly fumbles his wine glass he’s so surprised to hear that name – he nearly spills it all over his counter top, catches it at the last second. Then, he laughs. “Oh, wow,” he rubs at his forehead and feels light headed. It’s either the wine, or the fame shine coming off of Derek Hale. “Yeah, I knew Josh for a while, too. He was in one of my videos –“

“I know,” Derek interrupts, taking another big sip of his wine before pulling it back to keep speaking. “He’s always spoken pretty highly of you.” He gives Stiles a long look, like he’s trying to use his eyes to laser his way through Stiles’ head. What he would find there, Stiles is not so sure he would like very much. “He said he thought you and I would hit it off.”

Ah, so there it is. Stiles leans back against his counter and puts his glass down with a clink, sighing through his nose and looking somewhere past Derek’s head. “So you’ve come to fuck me,” he assesses, tone very blank.

Derek is clearly shocked – he nearly chokes on his wine, coughing and sputtering for a moment. It surprises Stiles; you’d think a guy like this would be used to these kinds of things being said to him at all hours of the day. Christ, every time he tweets he’s flooded with people begging him to fuck them in more colorful words than Stiles had just used. “That’s not –“

“You have,” he insists, and Derek wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand. 

“I was hoping to take you to dinner, but, Christ, yes, that as well.” 

“Uh-huh,” Stiles is crossing his arms over his chest again. It’s a defense mechanism he picked up in the last couple of years, folding in on himself, making himself appear as small as possible. He’s too skinny, has been too skinny for a while, so he presses his fingers against his rib cage and sucks in a deep breath. “Can I be totally and completely forthright with you?”

“You have already proven yourself to be exactly that,” he seems surprised still, but he nods his head all the same. “So, sure, go for it.” 

“I…” he starts, and then turns to look out his window, again. The view really is great. “I just got out of the single worst relationship of my life, and I’m not really…ready to…” he trails off. When he had been in Malibu deciding that he would let Derek into his apartment, he had been just lonely enough to think it was a good idea. Now, with Derek standing here all perfect and put together with his millions of dollars and his recommendation from a person Stiles has not seen in years, he has come to the realization that he cannot do this, after all. 

Derek seems like a normal, stable human being. Stiles is none of those things. 

Derek furrows his brow, and cocks his head to the side. “Are you talking about you and Matt Harding?” 

Stiles curls his fingers. Yeah, that guy. 

“Wasn’t that a year ago…?”

Stiles frowns. “Yes, but it –“

“Look, Stiles,” this is the first time Derek has said Stiles’ name out loud, so it’s weird to hear it tumbling out of his mouth so casually, “if you’re not interested, that’s really all you need to say. I get that you and I don’t run in the same circles, but you’re –“

“Derek, I’m not telling you a line,”he snaps, angry, because he is. Angry at the suggestion he would ever lie his way out of a date with someone. “It was…Christ.” He pulls his arms off of himself and runs his hand down his face, shaking his head. “It was the worst relationship of my life, the worst breakup of my life, the worst experience of my life. After it was done, I thought,” he sucks in a deep breath and shrugs. “…I thought it was going to kill me. The press. Things he said about me. It was…”

It’s a good thing Derek pipes up, because Stiles could’ve kept going. And going. He’s never really had anyone to talk to about what happened to him, what happened between he and Matt, and he’s afraid if someone ever gave him the chance, he would spill it all out like word vomit. He had to heavily edit even the songs he wrote about it, just to take out all the truly incriminating bits. Lots of people believe that he is vindictive, because he must be, writing all those songs about people who have done him wrong. If he were, really and truly, a vengeful person…well. The album would be a lot different. Matt wouldn’t be able to set foot outside again. 

“…I get it,” Derek says, and it seems like, for the moment, he truly does. “It’s okay, I get it. I’ve heard he’s not the nicest guy on the face of the planet.”

“Oh, he was, at first.” 

Derek looks like he doesn’t know what to do with that. He stands there looking at Stiles for a moment, uncomfortable, and Stiles looks back. “So, then, you won’t let me take you to dinner.” 

“I would hate to lead you on.” 

“Lead me on,” he repeats, a smile spreading across his face. This is the first time he appears arrogant, or at least as arrogant as someone in his position is expected to be. “I’m not asking you to get married. I’m asking you to let me show you a good time,” he shrugs, like it truly is no big deal, not even at all. “Surely, he hasn’t ruined dinner and good sex for you.” 

At that, Stiles can’t help but snort a laugh. No, Matt didn’t ruin sex or dinner for him. Did he ruin individual nights out and individual times in bed, yes. But the concept of going out on a date and getting railed afterwards, especially by someone as good looking as Derek Hale, has not been sullied by the memories of what he went through with that fucking guy. 

“So, what, you just wanna…hang out?” He waves his hand around in the air when he says it, to imply the meaningless nature of the term itself. Or, the anything goes of it all. “Don’t you have a bunch of people swarming you at all times, desperate for a chance to hang out?”

“Well, I didn’t go to their apartments, did I? I came to yours.”

Stiles swallows. “So you did.” 

“I sure did.”

“What exactly is it that Josh told you about me that makes you so interested?” He covers his mouth up with his wine glass the second he can, so Derek won’t see him blushing or smiling nervously. 

“Josh just said you were nice to work with,” he shrugs, and Stiles thinks Josh definitely had more to say than that but that Derek won’t repeat it, “what he said isn’t the reason I wanted to meet you in the first place.”

“So, what’s the reason?”

Derek puts his glass down and rests his palms on the counter of the island separating them – just five feet, that’s it, all the distance between them. For whatever reason, as this conversation has progressed, it’s started feeling like less and less. Like Stiles could reach out and touch him, if he wanted to. It’s a bizarre thought to have, for Stiles. He hasn’t thought that about anyone, for a long time. 

“Because I want to have sex with you.”

“Oh, boy.” 

“Don’t pretend like you’re not used to people saying as much,” he lifts an eyebrow. “You know you’re good looking.”

Actually, Stiles does not know that. He is not used to people saying as much, anymore. He turned off comments on instagram posts and ignores all his twitter replies and stopped reading tabloids about himself. He has no idea whether the general populous finds him attractive or not. “And you think everyone wants to fuck you, because you’re Derek Hale.” 

He shrugs. That is a yes. 

“Oh, whatever,” Stiles is blushing again, so then he’s hiding behind his wine glass again. 

“You know what I’ve always found really helps me out after a terrible breakup?” 

Stiles already knows the answer, but he doesn’t tell Derek not to say it out loud. He sort of wants to hear him say it.

“Having sex with someone else. Trust me.” 

“You’re really trying to talk me into sleeping with you?”

“I just don’t see the harm.”

“I’ve got a major album launch coming in less than two weeks.”

“All the more reason to do it,” he reasons. “You of all people know the power of using publicity to sell yourself.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” He asks, scandalized by the implication. 

“Really, Stiles? You’ve never gone out on a date with someone just to sell another few thousand copies of your album?”

Stiles is about to open his mouth to deny it, but then he realizes, he can’t. Because he certainly has done that. At Lydia’s behest, yes, but still – he did it all the same. He went out with some guy from a popular teen show before his third album came out, pretty much just for the sake of getting his picture taken and to get people talking about him. They had sex, sure, because why the hell not, but really, it was all about sales. 

It’s not exactly something he’s proud of. But then he remembers Derek Hale full on got engaged to someone as a ploy to get people in to watch his stupid, shitty fucking movie once. They never got married. Of course not. And it’s not like Derek is here proposing to Stiles right now, either. It’s not that big of a deal. It is clear, crystal like water, that it really is not a big deal to Derek Hale. For all Stiles knows, he’s got some weird little list of celebrities he wants to sleep with, and getting Stiles will just be a check mark in a notebook to him. 

Things like this used to not bother Stiles at all. He’s done his own rounds. It’s fun. Or, it used to be. He knows exactly what it is that has him hesitating, he knows why he’s gun shy in spite of how he used to never even put the safety on before – and it makes him angry. That Matt might’ve ruined him forever. Like he wrote on his album. 

He takes another big sip of his wine, finishing it without realizing, and then gently sets the glass down on his island. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Derek agrees. 

Stiles stands there and looks at him – his clean, unwrinkled clothing. His chiseled jawline. His impeccable skin. Then, he gestures toward where his bedroom is, like, uh, are we doing this? 

Derek smiles at him, all teeth. It is disarming, to be smiled at by someone like Derek Hale. “How about we have dinner first?” 

“If we must,” Stiles all but spits at him, like he’s annoyed, irritated by the entire ordeal. His callousness is a shield and a defense mechanism he uses against being seen as weak, and, for whatever reason, Derek is not put off by it. He just smiles some more and drinks his wine, like Stiles is more of an amusement to him than anything else. 

“I’m sure you’ll like me.”

“I don’t really like anyone,” Stiles is honest as a heart attack when he says this. 

“People like you,” is the bizarre response Derek has back to this – and then, as though this entire thing is already over and done with, he puts his own empty glass down right next to Stiles’ on the island in between them, and heads for the door. 

Just like that, he’s gone, leaving Stiles blinking after him, at his closed front door, listening to the murmuring of Boyd and whoever Derek has waiting for him out there. Stiles looks out at his view again, the city he dreamed about his whole life, and frowns. What a fucking weirdo, he thinks.

**

Stiles’ presence is requested at Derek Hale’s own Tribeca apartment, which frighteningly is so close to Stiles’ he could open up his living room window and throw a rock and likely hit Derek’s own living room window across the way. Stiles had never known he lived so fucking close to him; but then, most of Stiles’ days in New York are a bit booked out. So he never quite had the time to notice paparazzi flocking down the block or swarms of teenaged girls bouncing around outside of someone else’s apartment for a change.

When he pulls up, there are girls waiting outside, indeed. Stiles hesitates for a fraction of a second, gripping onto the leather underneath him as he looks through the tint at all of them out there, because they know Derek is inside. Up the steps, past the security, maybe only thirty feet away from where they stand. He, stupidly, had not expected any fanfare for his arrival. 

Boyd is already opening up the door, not stopping to ask if Stiles is ready or not. Likely, because he knows the answer would be no, and he’s tired of dealing with Stiles’ cold feet regarding all things … camera. Let’s put it that way. 

He slides out and turns, gesturing a bit roughly for Stiles to hurry up and get out. Stiles sits there, blinking. No one has seen him yet. It is not too late for him to demand that the driver takes him away from this, leaving Boyd behind if he had to – it is not too late for him to go to some dive bar and hide in a corner and drink himself half to death instead of doing this. 

“Let’s go,” Boyd says forcefully, gesturing with two fingers. Christ, he’s already here. 

With a deep breath, Stiles slowly moves his body over the seats to the opposite side of the car. He puts one leg out, and then a second, and slowly rises up to his full height. The response is immediate. None of these people were expecting to see him here; maybe, and only maybe, the few paparazzi milling around knew he would be here but only if Derek had someone on his team let them know that he would be. Somehow, he doubts that – so shock and awe is the reaction he gets as soon as he’s out there in the open. 

At least he had dressed date appropriate, he thinks, as the collective gasp and fanfare fills the street like water in a glass. It seems loud and everywhere, people saying his name and cameras flashing, Boyd grabbing him and propelling him forward. On instinct, Stiles keeps his head down. It used to be he’d give at least a half hearted smile toward a camera or two for the hell of it, or even at least look up and give them something to work with.

Now, he curls in on himself a bit and frowns, keeping his eyes on his feet. 

They go up a short set of steps, where the door is already open for them by some other huge dude that Stiles presumes to be a member of Derek’s own security. In they go, the door slamming behind them on excited chatter and more camera clicks, leaving Stiles alone with Boyd and several people he has never seen before. 

“It’s just up the stairs, Mr. Stilinski,” someone is saying to him, gesturing up a seemingly endless staircase, while Stiles, for whatever reason, turns behind himself and glances out the window of the door. It’s still loud, outside, impossibly loud. Stiles forgets this is something about New York that he has always detested. 

Well. Not always. Just…recently. 

“Stiles,” Boyd is grabbing him again, manhandling him toward the steps. This is treatment that Stiles is beyond used to, so he goes along with it and takes his first few steps. Then more, then the rest, all the way up to a locked door that gets opened for him by a person he barely glances at. 

Inside, Derek is standing there drinking a beer – totally normal. It is quiet, and Derek has clearly just been standing right there waiting for Stiles’ arrival for at least five or so minutes. The city is not totally muted, but it is muffled; if Stiles tries hard enough, he can hear the people down below talking about him. 

“Sorry about that,” Derek tells him, before taking another sip. 

Stiles sucks in a deep breath. The door behind him is closed, and they’re alone, totally alone, as alone as two people like them ever truly get to be. It was only mildly traumatic to be thrown to the wolves like that, but Stiles decides then and there to not be angry about it. He slaps a sly smile on his face and runs a hand through his hair, forgetting he had styled it, ripping it out quickly before he ruins his hard work. “I better get used to it again, anyway,” he waves his hand and then stuffs it deep into his pocket for something to do. “Press tour cometh.” 

Stiles has been actively trying to dig himself a grave to hide in for the past several years, but yes, press tour does indeed cometh. No matter how deep Stiles digs, no matter how many times he’s made a complete ass out of himself as some function or another, no matter what he says or does, he can’t keep it at bay. 

During all he time he had spent making himself either invisible or undesirable, he had forgotten everything about what he learned ever since becoming not just Stiles Stilinski but _the_ Stiles Stilinski. Now it’s time to relearn it all over again, and it’s not going to be fun and exciting like it was the first time around. Not even fucking close. 

Derek smiles at him, again, like it’s all so funny to him anyway. This is the moment where Stiles actually takes in his surroundings, noticing what Derek is wearing and where he’s standing and all the accents that go along with him. When he had taken the time to imagine what Derek’s apartment would be like, he had thought, you know, that weird grey and white minimalistic rich people nonsense that the Kardashians like to subscribe to. Derek just seemed that type of a person – all muted colors and fancy designs and high ceilings. 

Instead, Derek’s apartment is very…open. There are huge windows with big green curtains, some open some closed, a coffee table, a well loved couch, personal effects, and a kitchen that Stiles can’t quite make out all the way from where he’s standing. It’s all greens and dark yellows and browns, like someone’s fancy cabin in the woods instead of a multi-million dollar apartment in New York City. 

Derek has got on a nice button down shirt, nice jeans, clean shoes. He’s got this casual look about him, like he’s mastered the art of mixing business with pleasure and now doesn’t even have to think about it before getting dressed. “I really am sorry about that,” he says, and Stiles waves his hand away, swallowing a big lump in his throat. 

He steps farther into the living room, running his hands down the front of his shirt in a nervous tic. Then again, he buries them as deep as possible into his jean pockets and feels like he’s intruding in spite of having been invited here. It occurs to him that he does not know what in fuck’s name he’s meant to say to Derek, now. 

Flirting is off the table, as it’s a language he has forgotten. Being funny and likable and charming like they used to call him in magazines is also off the table, because those traits don’t seem to come to him so much anymore. He settles for standing there like a statue, gazing at some of the art Derek’s got up on the walls. Personal photos, as well. 

“You want a beer?” Derek asks him, gesturing away toward the sliver of kitchen that Stiles can make out from where they’re standing. 

“Twist my arm, why don’t you?” He does a finger gun, bizarrely, and then feels embarrassed about it, tucking that hand away once more. 

Derek turns on his heel, heading off and away – so Stiles follows behind him, trotting along and matching the bigger man’s stride easily. He looks out the windows and sees nothing but other buildings, other windows, like half the views in New York tend to be. 

The kitchen is big, all silver and shiny but with clear evidence that Derek lives here. Like, the coffee mug in the sink and the stack of mail in one corner of the marble countertop. It smells like food, really good food, so Stiles’ stomach growls. He hasn’t eaten anything all day, which is par for the course for him. As Derek leans down into the fridge and produces a second beer, he says, “I have wine too, if that’s more your speed.”

Stiles snorts, shaking his head. “All alcohol is my speed, haven’t you heard?” 

“I hear all sort of things,” he pops the top off of the beer, so it clatters down to the floor, right between them, as Derek turns and faces him head on. He leaves the cap there, so he can meet Stiles’ eyes head on, direct. He has this insane confidence about him, as though no one, especially not a prole like Stiles, makes him nervous or unsure of himself. Eye contact is easy, for him, but Stiles squirms under his gaze. “I believe very few of them.” 

Stiles takes the beer and immediately swigs it, desperate for something to quell his nerves, at least down to a dull roar. “You saw me at the SAG awards, dude, don’t be nice.” 

Derek does that smile, again, all teeth, like a wolf. That’s what it reminds Stiles of, he’s finally figured it out – a wolf. It’s not friendly, or genuine, or particularly kind. It’s…almost predatory. “I am not nice. Haven’t you heard?” 

Stiles has had three whole sips of beer, which is not enough, not even fucking close, for him to be saying something like this – but he says it, all the same. “I read your Wikipedia page last night, so, I’ve heard.”

Derek is amused beyond all belief. He laughs and leans against his counter, all casual and give-a-fuck, clutching his beer in his hand and looking like a magazine ad. “And what did it say?”

“Let’s see,” Stiles taps his chin in mock thought, “did you know that you and I are both from Northern California?” 

“I did know that. That is not the most interesting thing that was said about me, surely.” 

Not even close. Derek apparently has a reputation for being an ill tempered jackass who has been in a bar fight or two – but all instances of this ever occurring date back years and years, to when he was first getting famous in his early 20’s. It’s been five years since he’s gotten drunk and picked a fight with some hapless asshole in a Chicago bar, but all the same, things like that tend to stick. They know him as charming, yes, and midnumbingly hot, yes, and rich and a dog lover and philanthropic, but they will also always remember that he’s a hotheaded asshole, too. 

When Stiles favors taking another sip of his beer instead of providing a response to that statement, Derek reads between the lines anyway. He smirks and shrugs. “I can imagine. We’re even, anyway,” an even bigger smirk, “I read your Rolling Stone cover.” 

“Oh, yikes,” Stiles immediately spits, slapping his hand to his forehead. He had nearly forgotten about that, somehow, someway, even though it was only a matter of weeks ago that he was forced to meet some toothless journalist and pretend to be a human being instead of a flesh vessel for misery. 

“Everyone has,” Derek waves his hand like it’s a non-issue, not a big deal.

But, that’s not true. Well, it is, in some cosmic sense, where _everyone_ really refers to _everyone who gives a shit about pop culture_ and not the royal and true _everyone_. Stiles imagines that his Rolling Stone article, the one where they had him frowning into a camera on a beach somewhere, and his Entertainment Weekly feature, the one where he’s frowning into a camera in a record shop somewhere, are the suggested reads of the week. The ones that Apple pops up as a notification from the News app, that some people click just for something to read on the train home, that most people simply ignore. 

Stiles has absolutely no idea what the response to either of them have been. Christ, he hasn’t even fucking read them himself – why torment himself even more than he already has? Derek sips his beer and gives nothing away, not a hint or a murmur of what he thought about the things Stiles had said or how he looked in the pictures. Stiles is forced to prompt him. “Well, what’d you think?”

Derek pauses. Like, for a while. He swishes beer around in his mouth, swallows it, and then parts his lips, then nothing comes out. He seems to be choosing his words extraordinarily carefully, as though he’s concerned one wrong word will send Stiles out the door in a huff with a slam behind himself. “I think if you’re trying to sell yourself as a tortured artist, you are succeeding.” 

That says enough in and of itself. Stiles had met with the journalist whose name he obviously does not remember in a hotel room in Manhattan because he couldn’t bear to do it in his own apartment and insisted it be done that way. He was the star, so everyone bent over backwards to make it happen for him, no matter how idiotic it was to get a hotel room for a four hour interview. He had sat on the balcony smoking and frowning and answering questions like the answers were being tortured out of him in the Spanish Inquisition. It is a wonder they even printed anything. 

“You know what’s crazy is that I’ve actually had just about enough of selling myself at all.” 

Derek looks at him for a minute, quiet. Again, Stiles feels attacked by the look, like Derek isn’t just looking at him, but really seeing him. Really, really seeing him. He must be, actually, because he sees through all the misery business bullshit and settles on a cause. He hypothesizes a reason for this behavior, and comes up with the truth, somehow. “Matt Harding is that much of an asshole, huh?” 

Stiles takes a big, long sip of a his beer. He thinks about the time that Matt came to his show in San Antonio and how huge of a deal it was that he was there, not just to Stiles, but to Stiles’ fans and the whole crowd and everyone who ever cared about him – to have his boyfriend at his show. Where Stiles’ livelihood comes from, where he gets to do what he loves, where he’s always at his most honest. 

And then, they got in a huge fight on the tour bus and Boyd heard everything and tried to tell Stiles that what Matt had said to him wasn’t okay, unacceptable, beyond anything someone should say to someone they’re supposed to love. 

“You will just have to wait for the album like everyone else to find out how much of an asshole he really is.” 

They drink their beers and stand there for a moment, silence. Then, “I hope you like chicken.” 

For some reason, that makes Stiles laugh. It’s just so out of the blue, a stark contrast to the conversation they had just been having, that he can’t help it. It’s got to be one of the first genuine laughs he’s had in a while, so it surprises him how easily it comes out of him. Derek smiles again, that movie star smile, so it makes Stiles laugh more. 

“I did not cook it, for the record. I cannot cook,” he gestures to a big red pot sitting on the stove with the lid on, which is where the smell must be coming from. “I had someone cook it for me.” 

“Why not?” Stiles says with a shrug. “What else is money for?” 

“I figured a home cooked meal would do you well.” Derek is looking him up and down. He is coming to the conclusion that Stiles is much too skinny, like everyone else has. 

“My main food groups are cereal and wine, so, yes.”

“You said something unbelievably similar to Rolling Stone, so I know,” he’s pulling the lid off of the pot so the smell becomes overwhelming, taking over the whole room – he’s getting plates down from a cabinet, busying himself. 

But Stiles is just standing there frowning down at the ground. He had said something about living off of wine and cereal to Rolling fucking Stone? And they printed it? For fuck’s sake, they could’ve edited that bit out. Now, Stiles is petrified to read it even more than he had been before; who knows what else he said. Truth be told, he was half drunk at the time. From the night before. 

And a little bit from the morning of. 

Before he knows it, he’s sitting at Derek Hale’s gigantic dining room table, right across from him, drinking beer and eating something with chicken in it. Stiles spends a moment or two just pushing it around on his plate, his appetite almost completely lost in spite of being starving, but Derek catches him. “You really should eat that.” 

“Okay, dad,” he smirks, like it’s really funny to him, even though he doesn’t much feel like laughing. He cuts into his meat and takes a bite, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s actually insanely good. Of course it is. God forbid anything in Derek’s life be even a hair short of perfect. 

“Dad,” Derek repeats back to him. He’s got that wolfy smile on again, so Stiles knows that this has gotten him worked up. It’s that easy. It’s gross, too, but Stiles is used to men being gross. 

Once dinner is done, Derek doesn’t even bother piling the plates up in the sink or anything of the sort. He just leaves them right where they are, bringing Stiles along back into his living room with all the windows and the big couches. Stiles sets up camp on the back of one of the couches, crossing his arms and gazing out the window across the street, where all the blinds are shut up nice and tight. 

“You have a really nice place,” he says. “It reminds me of being somewhere else aside from New York.”

“Like where?”

Stiles shrugs. “Just not New York.” 

“I take it you don’t like New York so much.” Derek puts his hands in his pockets and stands, maybe five feet away from where Stiles has perched himself. 

“It’s exhausting to be here, like, all the time. Last year I basically did a residency, for how long I was holed up here.” 

Derek opens his mouth, and then closes it just as quickly. More likely than not, he was going to ask if the reason Stiles was holed up here was because this is also where his piece of shit ex boyfriend lives, and hey, whatever happened with all that, and was it really so bad, and was he really that much of an asshole, and do you think you could get a jersey signed still? Derek might be a hotheaded asshole, but he seems to be able to tell when certain subjects are…taboo. He doesn’t say anything about Matt, so neither of them say anything for an extended minute – maybe even two. 

“I’m not crazy about New York, either,” Derek finally says. When Stiles turns to look directly at him, he finds that Derek is staring right out the window at the other buildings, as well. “I like wide open spaces. Not this shit.” 

It occurs to Stiles that he and Derek Hale may have more in common than he had previously realized. It had been very easy before to only see the image of Derek Hale as he is presented to the masses – a rich playboy type who stars in movies people make fun of but pay to watch all the same. And Stiles is a tortured artist type who drinks too much and has a slew of former lovers who don’t necessarily have the best things to say about him, and vice versa. 

In reality, they are both two people from the same part of the country who had normal lives before all this bullshit. They may actually have something to talk about, after all. 

“So,” Stiles says, uncrossing his arms to let them hang loosely in his lap. “You’re a fan.” 

Derek gives him this bemused smile, almost like he’s not sure he just heard what he thinks he just heard. “A fan of…?”

With two thumbs pointed back at himself, Stiles says, “me.” 

“Define fan.” 

“You’ve heard my music.”

“Are there people who haven’t been subjected to it?”

Stiles has had a handful of number ones. Just a couple. One or two of them may have matriculated their way into the collective consciousness of his generation and the one below him — in that sort of unshakeable way that defining songs tend to do. One second he’s playing his school talent show and dive bars, then all of the sudden, he’s on wedding party playlists and gradation playlists and at pool parties and school dances and house parties and on the bus and in elevators. 

“You have been inescapable for, I don’t know, four years, now?” 

Stiles can’t help but smile, and then quickly brings his finger up to his lips to try and smooth it out back to impassive. So, that’s a yes. Derek has ‘been subjected to’ at least three of Stiles’ more notable works. “What’s your favorite?”

Derek seems to be enjoying this conversation, either because he thinks it’s funny and is simply playing along, or because it’s the first time since Stiles got here that Stiles hasn’t been somewhat insufferable, Stiles cannot be sure. But he has a genuine smile on his face, a casualness in his body language. “Sea Monster.” 

“Yuck,” Stiles makes a face. “Everyone says Sea Monster.” 

“It’s the one that really lodges itself into the prefrontal cortex the second it comes on,” he points to his head, “you hear it once, suddenly it’s all you think about for a week.” 

“I know,” Stiles grins. “It’s like the Cotton Eyed Joe.” 

“Now, what’s your favorite Derek Hale movie?” 

Stiles makes an innocent face, shakes his head. “I told you I’ve never seen one.” 

“You’re lying,” he accuses this gently, but sure of himself. He is beyond certain that Stiles has sat on his ass and watched one of his illustrious films. “I know you’ve seen at least one.” 

“I’m serious,” Stiles uses his index finger to cross over his heart, “I swear I have never, ever seen one of your movies. Have I seen bits and pieces, sure, but –“

“Like what?” 

He really wants to know. He’s smiling, but he’s also serious, like he seriously cannot wait to hear what specific parts of his movies Stiles has seen, and when, and where, and with who, and why. Like imagining Stiles watching him gives him some sort of a thrill. 

Stiles taps his chin, flipping through his mental Rolodex of movie scenes to try and remember one that carries Derek’s face. “I have this memory of you loading a gun with dirty fingers and being all sweaty.”

“That could be any number of them.”

“Or of you jumping out of an airplane.”

“That also could be any one of them.” 

“I saw the trailer for Dead By Sunset when I went to go see the last Hunger Games movie,” he snaps his fingers. “How many figures do you make on a movie like that, anyway?” 

Derek puts his hands in his pockets and shrugs, as though he can’t remember or can’t quite put his finger on the exact number. Stiles knows better; Derek knows how much money he made on each and every single one of those movies. Numbers that big tend to stick in your brain. Stiles would bet the last of the Dead by Whatever series made Derek at least a couple million dollars, if not more than that. “I don’t like to talk money.”

“Yikes,” Stiles raises his eyebrows and smirks. “That’s what gross assholes always say. And I would know – I’m the king of fucking gross assholes.” 

“It’s a good thing we’re here alone then, isn’t it?” 

Oh, that’s a line if Stiles has ever heard one. He swallows and his hands go a little clammy, when he should’ve known they were leading up to this based on the playful nature of their conversation, the way Derek had been minutely inching himself closer to Stiles’ body without Stiles noticing it, the look that Derek is giving him. 

It’s funny. Stiles didn’t think he was being particularly enticing or charming, sitting at the dinner table like the dining dead, his terrible Rolling Stone interview being discussed, admitting he is not the kind of person who could sit through a movie like Dead by Sunrise or any of its sequels, as though he were so much better than all that. All the same, Derek is into it. Whatever it is that Derek likes about Stiles, maybe just his looks alone which would be fine, it seems to be doing it for him. 

“So you admit it,” Stiles lifts a single brow, “you’re a gross asshole.” 

“I’m actually not,” he’s closer, and closer still, so close that Stiles can feel the heat off of his body. He shifts, because he’s nervous, not because he doesn’t want to do what Derek wants to, but because he’s just fucking nervous. “I just come off as one.”

“That’s too bad,” Stiles clears his throat and tries to look nonchalant, instead of like someone who hasn’t had sex in nearly an entire full year. “Then you’re not my type.” 

Derek smiles – the wolf grin, all teeth, dimples, tan skin – and puts his hands on Stiles for the first time. Both of them, gripping onto either one of Stiles’ arms. Not terribly hard, not hard at all luckily, because too hard would make Stiles recoil, give him a flashback to someone else, somewhere else. 

He just touches him. Fingers light, grip gentle, skin on skin. Stiles breathes out through his nose and then clears his throat again, right as Derek is leaning down to kiss him on the mouth. He panics, and abruptly says, “I have not fucked anyone since I broke up with Matt,” in a rush, like word vomit, and Derek leans back only a matter of inches. Just enough so they can look each other in the face. “I’m feeling very, uh, like…nervous.” 

“We don’t have to have sex,” Derek says, and he means it. Stiles cannot remember the last time someone said that to him, and actually meant it. “We can just kiss.” 

“Oh,” his laugh is short and clipped. He hasn’t felt like this in a long, long time. “Oh, uh – kissing. Right.” 

“You know, you come off a lot more confident in your music.” 

“I know,” he sucks in a deep breath, “I know, it’s an act, I’m a pussy, actually,” and with that, he takes the initiative to bridge the distance between their faces, and they kiss. It’s a quick peck, at first, the gentle way two people kiss when they don’t know each other very well. 

They pull apart and meet eyes. Derek says, “I think you’re the best looking person I’ve ever fucking seen,” and it’s, like, brutally honest. “I’ve always thought so.”

Stiles figures this is some line to try and get Stiles to be more pliant, so that Stiles will let Derek into his pants after all. He bears it the same way he has borne meaningless compliments from hundreds of other people for years now, with an eye roll and a twist to his mouth. That makes Derek smile, a reaction as weird as all of his reactions to Stiles’ attitude have been, and they’re kissing again. 

They kiss and kiss. Derek tastes like beer and something else that’s just him – Stiles cannot remember the last time he had a first kiss with someone. It’s awkward and choppy and Stiles isn’t sure where to put his hands because who knows what’s off limits, but he settles on resting one on Derek’s chest while the other hangs limply in his own lap. Derek’s hands do not wander, like Stiles would’ve thought; they stay in place, holding onto Stiles’ upperarms gently, not drifting down to his pants or under his shirt or any of that nonsense. 

He pulls back, cocking his head to the side as he takes Stiles in, all the way, his whole face. “I’ve thought about that for a long time.” 

Stiles feels hot and strange and like he cannot for the life of him look Derek directly in the eyes, so he focuses on a spot across the room – a picture of Derek with a fish, on a boat somewhere. “You are buttering me up.”

“No,” Derek’s eyebrows furrow, a slight frown crossing his face. “I’ve just always wondered what it would be like, kissing Stiles Stilinski.” 

“Oh,” is Stiles’ brilliant response to that. Truth to be told, it has been a very long time since he’s been intimate with someone who was nice to him. It has been an even longer time since he’s kissed someone who acted like they really wanted to. It makes him depressed, to think of it like that, so he doesn’t linger on the thought, daring himself to finally look Derek directly in the eyes. “So you’ve had a crush on me?” 

Derek is still absurdly close to him, so they’re sharing the same breaths. “You are my type.” 

Derek Hale has a type, and Stiles is it? He tries to remember people that he knows for a fact that Derek has fucked before in the past, and comes up completely blank, which says more about Stiles’ affinity for holing himself up like a crab under the sand than it does anything else - all he knows is that if Stiles is Derek’s type, that really sucks for Derek. Strung out, miserable, too-skinny, sarcastic, rude assholes? Stiles wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy. 

“You should really be meaner to me, then,” he lifts an eyebrow, “that’s my type.” 

“I don’t think so,” Derek takes Stiles’ arm and pulls him up off the edge of the couch, so they’re both standing up to their full height again. Derek has an inch, maybe two, on Stiles, but he’s broader, stronger, more fit. “I won’t keep you much longer, I know you’re busy.” 

“Oh,” then Stiles is being lead away, to the front door again, where everyone is waiting for him. He is surprised; he had really thought this was going to lead up to Derek begging him to give into sex, which would lead to Stiles reluctantly agreeing because he’s too exhausted to really argue it, or at least something along those lines. Christ, they had made out for five entire minutes – Stiles can’t remember the last time he just kissed someone without it being a precursor to fucking whether he liked it or not. 

Derek puts his hand on Stiles’ shoulder when they’re at the door, a slim smile on his face. “Email me your phone number?”

“Oh,” again, Stiles says this. It’s like it’s all he can say, following all of Derek’s curve balls. “Ah, sure. This was, um. Nice.” What the hell is Stiles supposed to say? 

The door is opened for him, and Boyd is standing right there, looking beyond belief pissed off like he always fucking does – how long has Stiles been in here? Hours? It seems like five minutes have passed, but it’s dark outside, and Boyd has been waiting. 

Before either Stiles or Derek get the chance to say anything else to one another, Boyd is taking him off and away to the steps that Stiles barely remembers going up from last time. Before he puts his foot down on the first one, he looks over his shoulder and meets eyes with Derek, still hovering in his door way, watching Stiles leave. He gives Stiles the wolf grin again, and Stiles doesn’t know how to return the favor, so he doesn’t. He just goes out where the girls are still waiting, the cameras already flashing, the car door opened up for him.

**

_The No Good, Very Very Bad Days of Stiles Stilinski_

_In Manhattan, where everything and everyone around you moves at a lightning quick speed, Stiles Stilinski does tend to stand out. He has a recognizable face and a permanent scowl that many associate with at least five or so songs that have been floating around the public consciousness since he first emerged nearly eight years ago – but that’s not what makes people around him stop to notice him._

_He moves languid, and he doesn’t fit in, here. While grunge comes naturally to him, New York isn’t where he’s meant to be. While he has an attitude and a sneer to match the city itself, he doesn’t have the quick-wit or the body language anymore to keep up with the pace. When he walks into the hotel room he had more or less thrown a fit about conducting this interview in, he is immediately angry with me. “You want to go out to the terrace?” This is said even as he’s already opening the sliding door leading outside, where it’s overcast and cold and looking as though it’s about to downpour at any second. “I need a cigarette.”_

_He needed, as it would turn out, ten or so cigarettes. Smoked in perfect succession, one after the other – he takes more drags than he spares answers to any of my questions. Talking to him in like pulling teeth. He says he hates New York. He says he wants to jump off the balcony rather than be sitting where he is, with me. He complains that the coffee isn’t strong enough._

_Finally, I get him to remember that he has a record coming out in two months, and he pouts even as he’s blowing smoke through his nose. “I knew that I needed an extension on it, because I couldn’t put it out as it was, but it didn’t matter,” he waves his hand, long pale fingers that he’s known for, with callouses on the tips and scars from guitar strings, “they went nuts for the way it was because it’s very…” here, he takes a long pause. Three puffs, maybe more. “…bitter. I figure that’s how people like me to be.”_

_Bitter? Maybe. Stilinski has more or less built an entire empire on being embittered by one thing or another. Even his first record, all the way back when he was baby faced and actually smiled once in a while, has its fair share of woe and misery, as is his namesake. I get the idea from his callousness and the way he barely ever looks me directly in the eye that he does not want to be here, and that, too, is a defining character trait for him, and has always been._

_When I ask him if that means he never wanted to put the record out in the first place, or if he doesn’t even like it, he frowns and sighs and looks down at the street where people walk past without a clue that hovering over their heads is perhaps one of the most influential artists of the last ten years. “Music is really the only thing I know how to do, or at least do well. I wanted to put an album out. Just not like this.”_

_I ask if that has anything to do with his high profile breakup with New York Yankee’s outfielder Matt Harding. This, in the Stilinski camp, is like setting off a bomb. The fire-haired manager seen lingering in the background of almost every picture of Stilinski on red carpets appears as a ghost from inside, and tells me in no uncertain terms that questions about Harding are off the table. Meanwhile, Stiles looks away and stares out at nothing, no comment, not a word._

**

Lydia answers after the first ring barely finishes, a clipped _yes?,_ no greeting. “What the hell is this shit?” Stiles demands – he’s waving around a copy of Rolling Stone like a mad man, pacing around in his apartment, livid.

“What the hell is what shit?” She sounds distracted. 

Stiles throws the magazine across the room, so when it lands, it lands wide open. A picture of him from the photo shoot they made him do leers out at him; his dead set eyes, the frown, the exact picture that the writer had painted of him there for all to see in technicolor. “This fucking smear campaign in Rolling Stone!” 

There’s a pause, then a sigh. She might be taking him off speakerphone, and then she definitely is, from how loud her voice suddenly gets right in his ear. “You read it.” 

“Uh, of course I fucking read it, I’m in it.” He grabs his glass of wine off the coffee table and slugs a huge sip, swallowing and then starting up again. “It’s a fucking flame, an absolute evisceration –“

“You forget that not only did I read this, but I was there when you did the interview,” she’s calm, eerily, like Stiles’ over reactions mean nothing to her anymore. “I don’t know what you expected her to write. That you were so pleasant and nice to her?” 

Stiles’ jaw drops. Then, he takes another big sip of his wine. “You should’ve said we needed to redo it, you should’ve rescheduled, you knew that I wasn’t –“

“I told you months ago when they’d be coming. I told you the exact date and time. You knew. You chose to behave that way anyway.”

“Oh, right, I see what’s happening,” he’s pacing again, sloshing his wine around and then kicking at the magazine down on the ground just for good measure. “You love the fact that I was an unbelievable asshole and it’s immortalized in print, because everyone’s talking about how awful I am, you just love that.” 

“Is there anything else? I’m a bit busy.” 

He kicks the magazine again, so it slides across the room and closes to the front cover. There he is again, that fucking miserable expression on his face, and he can’t stand the sight of himself, so he looks away. “Everyone already thinks I’m this massive piece of shit, and you could not care less!” 

“Everyone thinks that you’re a genius,” Stiles can imagine her waving her hand like it’s all a non-issue, he’s being dramatic, she doesn’t have time for this. “Everyone thinks that you’re lashing out because it sells more records to be a train wreck.” 

“I’m not _lashing out_ , I’m not acting like this so I can sell the record,” some wine spills, falling onto his pristine white carpeting. He could not care less. “I am so close to pulling it, I am this close to being done with this fucking circus, this shitfest –“

“It’s interesting to me you say you’re done with the circus,” she emphasizes the word to let Stiles know he’s being ridiculous, “yet you go out and get your picture taken seconds after letting Derek plow you to hell and back.” 

Stiles is flabbergasted. He opens his mouth to retort, but nothing comes out, not for a solid ten seconds. He hadn’t known the pictures had already hit, but apparently, they have. It was just last night, but it’s already happening, and everyone already knows he was there with Derek Hale, and they all think that he was there getting railed. Why else would he be there? “I did not sleep with Derek Hale,” he says, his voice low. 

“You and I both know it doesn’t matter whether you did or you didn’t. People think you just want to sell an album, Stiles. You get drunk at every awards show and make a complete fool of yourself, it’s just to sell the record. You fuck Derek Hale, it’s just to sell the record. You treat having the cover of Rolling Stone like a burden, it’s just to sell the record.”

Stiles finishes his glass and throws it on the ground – it doesn’t shatter, luckily, just rolls itself away, toward the magazine. “I am so sick of this.” 

“I know,” she’s rolling her eyes, Stiles can tell. “You cannot pull it. You literally don’t have the authority to do so.” 

“I know that. Sometimes I say things because I like to pretend that anyone around me gives a shit about me.” 

“Oh, Stiles,” she clucks her tongue, “you’ve had too much to drink, again. Isn’t it a little early?” 

Stiles hangs up without another word. He looks at the magazine, his dead, empty eyes staring up at the ceiling, at his empty glass right next to it. He puts his phone down on the coffee table and then puts his hands on his hips, sucking in a great big breath. It’s humiliating that people have read that, that he was so rude to the journalist, that she wrote about how miserable he is, how everyone can tell, how he acts like having all of his dreams come true is a fucking cross he has to bear. 

They all think they know him. It is so exhausting, so criminally fucking exhausting, to be seen. All the time.

**

Stiles walks into rehearsals and seriously thinks about turning right back around and making a break for it when he sees Scott there. It’s innocuous as ever; Scott is drinking coffee and eating half of a bagel, hovering by the drums and making small talk with some of the stage crew, but the sight of him there in full flesh and color has Stiles’ fight or flight instinct kicking into overdrive.

As far as Stiles’ friends go, he genuinely means it when he says that he basically has none to speak of. He used to be friends with Lydia, but then something happened to her brain that made her into who she is now. He used to be friends with a couple of Matt’s teammates, but in the breakup, obviously they chose to go along with him. He used to go to parties and hang out with people and be funny and likable. 

Now, he only really has one true friend left. The problem is, Stiles treats him like he doesn’t exist. Scott will call and Stiles will let it go to voicemail. Scott will text and Stiles will ignore it in favor of staring out at the ocean or hiding under his bed covers. Scott will knock on his door and Stiles will pretend he isn’t home. The last time that Stiles saw him in person was last week, for rehearsals. That’s the only time they ever really see each other. 

Today, as soon as Scott sets his eyes on Stiles, his face splits into surprise – as though he isn’t here to practice Stiles’ own music. He turns his body away from whoever he had been talking to and nearly fumbles his bagel to the ground. 

Stiles tries to ignore it. He heads straight for the guitars lined up neatly in their stands and makes a big show of picking one up, slinging the strap on and turning his body away. It’s no use – Scott materializes right beside him and is speaking, before Stiles even has a chance to turn around and see him. 

“Tell me you’re not seriously with Derek Hale.”

Stiles pretends to check that the guitar is in tune (of course it is, they tune all of these before he shows up), and then makes a face like he has no idea what Scott is talking about. To sell it, he says as much out loud. “Who?”

“Who?” Scott’s eyebrows disappear into his hairline, his mouth falling open in shock that Stiles would be so bold as to deny it. “Stiles, that guy is an asshole.” 

“That’s fine,” Stiles waves it off, “because I’m not with him, so it doesn’t matter.”

Like Stiles had not spoken at all, Scott continues. “Haven’t you heard about all the fights he’s gotten into?”

Stiles would point out that all of those alleged fights happened years and years ago now, but that would implicate him. Instead, he says, “no, because I’m not with him.”

“But you’re leaving his apartment.” To add insult to injury, Scott tacks on, “late.” 

“Ten o’clock is late, now?”

“So you admit it,” he snaps his fingers. “You were in his apartment, screwing him.”

“Don’t we have to rehearse?” He lifts a single brow and calls everyone else’s attention, strumming a few times so the side conversations all fizzle out as everyone meanders over to their instruments and places. Scott stands there for a moment frowning and looking really pissed, like beyond, but then he just makes a face and pulls his sticks out of his back pocket, slowly walking to his own corner of the room to glower and bang his anger out for the next few hours. 

Stiles doesn’t know why he doesn’t want to admit that he was, in fact, in Derek Hale’s apartment the other night. In all likelihood, it’s probably because Scott is right – the dude is notoriously another big asshole, and as Scott has seen Stiles get burned through by many other assholes just like Derek Hale, he’s not exactly dying to see it happen all over again. Christ, here they are, performing these shitty songs Stiles had written about all the ways that Matt had screwed with him mentally, and Stiles appears to be entertaining the idea of doing it again. 

And Stiles doesn’t talk to Scott much, anymore. A lesson that Stiles has learned is that one of the hardest things about trauma is admitting to the people closest to you that it even fucking happened. Instead, Stiles writes it all down in metaphors, so the meaning of it is hidden underneath the guise of personal interpretation. 

During a break for lunch, Stiles intends to sit and eat his half sandwich by himself while his band and crew all laugh and make merry because they’re working again and the record is coming out faster than any of them could blink – but of course, Scott isn’t having it. 

He appears like a specter, slamming his brown bag lunch down on Stiles’ otherwise empty table and makes himself at home. He spreads, taking up as much space as he can, and levels Stiles with a very serious look. “I know you’re really seeing Derek Hale,” he says, and Stiles chews, chews, swallows. “I saw the pictures. It seems that’s the only way I ever find anything out about your life anymore, is lurking gossip websites like Radar Online.” 

That makes Stiles feel guilty, even if Scott doesn’t intend for him to feel that way. It is simply the truth, which has never been something that Scott has had a problem with. “I’m not seeing him in the literal sense of the word.” 

“Oh?” 

“Oh,” Stiles picks at his bread, the pickle, and then pushes his food away as though he’s bored of it. “We met at the stupid SAG awards and I guess his type is damaged twink, so do the math.” 

At this, Scott makes a face. “Do you even know the kinds of people he dates?”

Truthfully, no. Or at least, Stiles barely does. He’s seen pictures of Derek in passing or the odd tabloid or click bait articles – he knows he was dating that terrible actress from B horror movies for a while. And then, a big shot director. After that, his mind goes blank. 

“Damaged twinks don’t tend to make the list. He usually goes around with, like, A-list celebrities.” 

“Okay,” Stiles shrugs; this is all a non-issue. “Then, he’s messing with me or just trying to hook up with me so I’ll write a song about it. What else is new?” 

“That isn’t a problem for you?”

“I don’t really care,” he waves his hand and looks away, across the big space, where his guitars are all standing – and he has this passing thought of smashing them all, one by one. “He’s just another dick, most likely.” 

Then, Scott gets the worst look he could possibly ever get on his face. The one that’s all knowing and disappointed and sad, the way only a true could friend could look at him. “You know you deserve better than all this.” 

He knows what Scott means, knows that Scott knows, that he knows everything and has always known everything even when Stiles wouldn’t say it out loud. But hiding is what he has gotten best at, so he pretends like he doesn’t quite get it. “Better than all this?” He smirks and gestures to the space, the band, the proof that Stiles is as big as they say he is. “Dream come true.”

**

Stiles’ very existence is dependent on him not reading what they say about him. At best, maybe it’ll be positive and give him a little bit of an ego boost, at least enough to help him get on stage when they ask him to. At worst, it sends him spiraling into a liquor-soaked black hole that he always needs help climbing out of. One could imagine how it starts to not really be worth it anymore, even on the off chance that someone says something nice about him, for once.

All the same, Stiles is a millennial and the product of a generation that needs social media at least a little bit – so sometimes, he’s just masochistic enough to click on his twitter app. 

The first thing he does is go to his own page, because he hasn’t personally tweeted anything in, give or take, a year. He wants to know what they’ve got him saying, these days. They never tweet anything ‘personal’, like they’re actually pretending to be him or anything of the like. It’s all just promotional shit. Like, he’s apparently retweeted the music video for another band on his label’s newest single. That was nice of him.

Then there’s his Rolling Stone article, those same pictures of him miserable, and the album announcement, and the video, and the eerie picture he had chosen for the cover. He had opted for a textless cover, because everyone will be streaming it instead of physically owning it for the most part anyway; it’s of a forest, a muted picture of all greens and browns and the gray overcast sky above it. In the center, there is a small patch of it on fire, the smoke billowing up and up. 

Bored, he dares to traverse to his timeline. He follows mostly other famous people and other random shit he has been interested in over the years. He follows the Top Chef twitter and the Red Lobster twitter, Selena Gomez, the cast of Breaking Bad and Big Little Lies. It’s monotonous. 

Back around his third album, he had followed a certain number of fans because he thought it would be funny, or at least fun. It actually had been, because everyone went ballistic and tried to get his attention for the first year or so – then, it became clear he wasn’t going to give anyone attention, and the hype sort of died down, but he never did actually unfollow any of those accounts. This is where his true source of dread ultimately lies. 

It only takes twenty seconds of mindless scrolling for him to come across something that has his face draining of color. It’s a link to an article with a comment that’s vitriolic – the picture in the preview is one of himself and Matt together, maybe a few months before they broke up. Stiles can’t think of anything he hates more than seeing pictures of him towards the end of that fucking relationship, and this one isn’t any exception. 

He’s got on long sleeves in August, outside in the daylight, and he doesn’t look happy. He can only look at it long enough to remember the place, the time, the reason for his scowl, and then he is sick of looking at it altogether. _Matt Harding Isn’t Happy About the New Stiles Stilinski Album_ it reads, and Stiles grits his teeth so hard he’s amazed at least one of them doesn’t crack under the pressure. 

The comment above it is from one of those fans he followed, who says she’s pissed beyond all belief that he would even have the balls to comment on it at all. Stiles agrees with that sentiment, because seriously? Seriously, seriously? Not only are they asking him about it, but he’s _responding_?

Then, it shouldn’t surprise Stiles this much. The guy is a narcissistic pig, so of course he’s fielding questions better than he fields the actual field he plays on. 

Against all the alarm bells in his head, he sits up straighter and takes a big drink off of his wine bottle – yes the entire bottle, thanks – and clicks the link to go straight to the article. Ah, TMZ, of course, he thinks, and glowers at the picture again before scrolling down to get to the meat of the thing. 

_Matt Harding is publicly acknowledging the rumor that Stiles Stilinski, his former boyfriend of two years, has written an entire album about their tumultuous relationship. Stilinski is no stranger to writing about his very public breakups, and his latest project, slated for release just next week, is of course no exception._

_The lead single, The Eternal Scene, That everyone in the English speaking world has been forced to hear again and again (and again…) is so obviously about Harding that it’s almost comical anyone wanted clarification on the matter. Stilinski all but writes his name in. All the same, the questions haven’t stopped, and Matt Harding himself actually answered one of our camerman’s questions late last night as he was making his way out of a bar in New York (watch below.)_

Two thoughts cross Stiles’ mind. The first is that wouldn’t you know it, both Matt and Stiles are in New York at the same fucking time, go figure? And the second is that he should under no circumstances watch the video. There is only so much Matthew Harding content he can take in his fragile mental state, and seeing him moving and talking in full sound and color might just be enough to give him the strength to leap off his balcony down onto the waiting street below. 

He settles for reading the description of the video right below it. 

_”He loves to write bullshit about people he sleeps with. Of course it’s about me, he’s always trying to bury somebody.”_

Stiles puts his phone down, so the screen goes black after several extended seconds of him staring abysmally out across his living room. For a moment, all he does is just sit and churn the words over and over again in his head. He didn’t need to watch the video, after all. He can imagine the scene pretty spectacularly in his own head. He imagines that Matt was evidently sloshed and was wearing his usual going out garb of a v-neck and some jeans. He imagines that the bright lights they shine in his face make him giddy, stroke his ego, make him feel important. He imagines that the camera guy hounds him and asks again and again about Stiles, the song, the record, because it’s the only thing that makes him very important at all.

It makes him so mad to think that he’s given this fucking asshole the free press he desperately craves that he might just black out. He is such a fucking asshole, he is such a fucking asshole, and what does he mean? Stiles writes _bullshit_? It wasn’t bullshit when he was trying to weasel his way into Stiles’ pants with compliments and praise for how talented he thought Stiles was, how smart his writing is, and what does he fucking mean Stiles likes to _bury people_?

He only ever tells the truth, and excuse the fuck out of him if that implicates Matt Harding as a complete jackass. He should’ve been more direct. The Eternal Scene isn’t even that gasp-worthy; they had picked a mid range song for the lead so people would get excited about what else he has to say. It doesn’t have the punch the rest of the record has, so Matt really has no clue what he’s in for. 

It’s a break-up song. Ironically, Stiles had written it before they ever did actually break up. It’s about the eternal scene of their entire fucking relationship, the same scene again and again, like Groundhog Day. Fuck, fight, apologize, fuck. Which was the working title for the track, but they made him change it in spite of leaving the line in the song anyway. 

It’s not that fucking inflammatory. Yet here Matt is, crying about it to TMZ. And what really pisses Stiles off the most, the absolute fucking most, is that he knows Matt would know Stiles would read this. He knew Stiles would get fucking livid about this, would pitch a fit, call Lydia and scream and drink about it some more. 

Stiles is pissed beyond all belief, and he’s so fucking sick of feeling like Matt still pulls his strings like the puppet master, forcing him to feel like this all the god damn time. They haven’t seen each other or spoken in a year, and he’s in Stiles’ head, wiggling around, loving every moment of it. Christ, Stiles couldn’t even fuck the guy from People’s Top 10 Sexiest Men list, because he was too busy being all wounded and stupid over this idiot. 

With another big glug from the bottle, he pulls open his contacts and digs up the number he had gotten from Derek’s returned e-mail. Without a second thought he hits call, glaring murderously out at the skyline. 

Derek answers on the second ring. “Aren’t you a little busy to be calling at midnight on a Friday?”

“Busy?” He repeats. “I’m home alone on a Friday night drinking wine and being angry.”

“Ah, I see.” 

“Where are you?” There’s no background noise on Derek’s end – no evidence of him being out partying, or even being with someone else. Just silence, like he’s alone, too. 

Confirming Stiles’ suspicions, Derek says, “I’m home alone on a Friday night. Though, without the wine or the being angry.” 

“Perhaps you’d like to come over to my apartment.” 

There’s a pause on the other end, and Stiles fills it with the sound of him drinking some more. “You’re calling me in the middle of the night to invite me over?” 

“What happened to the guy who was in my emails practically begging to have sex with me?” he demands – and he’s rewarded with a baffled scoff. He wishes he could see the look on Derek’s face in the wake of that. 

“I was never practically begging to –“

“Uh, this is not my first rodeo. You were.” 

Derek sighs. It sounds long suffering, though he has barely spent enough time with Stiles yet to already be growing weary of him. Stiles half expects him to hang up right then and there and wash his hands of Stiles all together; he thinks Derek will realize in this moment that Stiles is a way bigger handful than he had anticipated, even for a no-strings attached fuck buddy. He will realize Stiles is manic and drunk all the time and not very much fun to be around, actually, and that will be the end of it. Stiles will have to angry-fuck someone else. 

Instead, Derek says this : “all right, I’m coming,” and promptly hangs up. Stiles stares at his phone in his hand after taking it away from his ear, eyebrows raised. Maybe he actually is good looking enough to cancel out his very obvious issues – it’s been a long time since someone has made him feel like that, so he lets himself enjoy it, for the split second that it lasts. 

When Derek arrives, he’s not met with any cameras outside, or any girls waiting to get his attention. It’s just him and Boyd out in the hallway when Stiles opens up the door. Boyd looks annoyed, remarkably annoyed, and Derek looks like he always does. Carefully put together, like a curated closet, a perfectly ensembled outfit and the hair to match. 

“Hi,” he says, beckoning Derek inside. Boyd opens his mouth to say something, probably something particularly cutting, but Stiles slams the door in his face before he gets the chance. He doesn’t need any commentary from the peanut gallery on his poor decision making skills, thank you very much. 

“Hi,” Derek says back. Then, he’s taking stock of the room. The open bottle of wine, almost completely empty, on the island. The takeout boxes from dinner still left out, a fork still stuck in the fried rice, likely to remain stuck until a construction crew comes to hammer it out. “Don’t you have a major career event coming up in a matter of days?” 

“Sure I do,” he shrugs, not getting it. 

“And you’re here drinking wine, eating Chinese food, and calling me?”

“Sure I am.” 

Clearly, Derek imagines that Stiles should be hard at work doing…something. Sure, Stiles is expected to be up at five in the morning tomorrow, dressed and ready for the press tour to kick off, for Stiles to be lead around and bossed around for an entire two week stretch. He has to go on Jimmy Fallon, and Ellen, and he has to get pictures taken of him out and about so that his existence floods the airwaves, so no one will be able to pick up their phone without being sent a notification about where the hell Stiles Stilinski is these days. 

But tonight, all he has planned is the complete and total avoidance of that particular reality. Derek is a big part of that. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had someone to hang out with,” he says, gesturing towards his living room couch with a grand sweep of his arm, as though he’s the queen welcoming a diplomat. “People tire of me quickly.” 

Derek sits on the couch that Stiles had picked out when he was twenty. It’s orange. Tangerine orange, to be more specific. It is a color that suits Derek Hale rather well. “So,” he says, and then nothing else. He is likely wondering if Stiles expects him to just get naked and ready to fuck, or if Stiles wants to treat him like a human being instead of a sex object for a while, first. 

Stiles is drunk enough to be forthright, so he says, “you ever read something about yourself that pisses you off so bad you want to howl at the moon like a wolf?”

This is funny, to Derek. He smiles. “I try not to read shit about myself.” 

“Oh, me too,” he meanders his way over to his kitchen island and pulls another bottle of red wine from his fancy wine case on the side, slapping it on top of his marble counter. “But I am masochistic and sometimes the siren call of twitter is impossible to ignore. You want a drink?” 

“Sure.”

Stiles pours two glasses. “All press is good press,” he says as he picks the glasses up by the stems and carries them off to the tangerine couch, sitting down close enough to Derek that their knees touch. “All assholes make good records.”

As he accepts his own glass of wine, Derek takes stock of him. Like he’s assessing just how drunk Stiles actually is, or how angry he is, or how crazy he is. “I’m going to take a wild shot in the dark and guess that you heard Matt Harding said something about you today.” 

Stiles nearly finishes his entire glass in one go, while Derek sits there and watches him with calculating eyes. “How would you even know that he did? You don’t read that shit or keep up with it, do you?”

Derek takes a single sip of his wine and swallows it, and he’s still got that guarded, searching expression on his face. Like he’s only really half engaged in this conversation, and the other half is spent evaluating Stiles’ every single movement. “No, but uh – Matt Harding saying something about Stiles Stilinski and vice versa is sort of…pervasive news.”

Ah, yes, of course. “People love a fucking train wreck, and I’m the biggest one. I’m the Titanic, and he’s the glacier. Iceberg. Whichever. Everyone wants to see that movie, after all. God forbid my life not be everyone’s favorite fucking reality show to tune into.” 

Derek puts his barely-drank wine down on the glass coffee table in front of them. Next to it, there’s the copy of Stiles’ Rolling Stone article. It’s all bent and torn and half destroyed, Stiles’ eyes distorted as they stare up blankly at the ceiling – and that feels like a metaphor for Stiles’ entire existence, these days. Derek has definitely noticed that, too, and he seems to be coming to a very obvious conclusion. “You are extremely drunk.” This is not said with any accusation, like how Lydia might say it or how TMZ might print it, but is just said like pure and simple truth. 

“When’s the last time I wasn’t? To quote my manager.”

Derek frowns. It’s this really big frown, too. His whole face frowns. His eyes, his mouth, his eyebrows, all of it. “You called me over to have sex with you, and you’re extremely drunk.” 

“I’m in the same room you are,” Stiles says with a scoff, rolling his eyes as he polishes his wine off once and for all. “I know what’s happening here, I don’t need a narrator.” He stands to get another glass full, but before he can even get all the way up onto his feet, Derek grabs him by his wrist and pulls him back down.

That’s the moment Stiles becomes aware of just how completely fucked out of his head he is – he flops back down onto the cushions like a dead fish, limbs splayed out, and he laughs. Derek is looking at him again, all serious, and he shakes his head. “I think you should go to bed.”

“I’m fine,” Stiles barks back, waving his hand and shaking his head. “I know you want me and I need a distraction, so let’s just get this over with.”

Unbelievably, Derek does not seemed thrilled with that particular use of words, and is not at all pleased with the thought of sex with him being something that one does just to _get it over with_. Derek is well aware of the fact that he’s sharing a couch with an extremely drunk, extremely messed up, extremely vulnerable person who only recently got out of a relationship with the king of the assholes. He may not know the specifics, but he knows enough. Everyone knows enough. The whole world sees Stiles for who he is. 

And the whole world is itching, desperate, cannot wait, for the opportunity to take advantage of him. TMZ can’t wait to catch him stumbling out of a bar to get a candid slurring speech about how Matt is an asshole, and Lydia can’t wait for him to cry on stage during the worst song he ever wrote, and the people who hate him can’t wait to see him overdose on something, can’t wait for him to be immortalized too young. And men like Derek are always there – to wait for him to be too drunk, too high, too sad to say no. They’re always there. There are thousands of them, Stiles knows it. 

Derek stands. “I think I’d better go.” 

“Why?” Stiles demands, watching Derek smooth his button down shirt with his hands. “Finish your drink, you should –“

“Stiles,” Derek interrupts, and he’s got that look on his face again. The serious one. The all seeing gaze. Like he knows Stiles, or something, when he doesn’t. Not at all. “You should go to bed, all right? Your eyes are bloodshot, you can barely stand up straight.”

“That’s usually how they like me,” he quips, a wry smile on his face, as though it’s funny. It isn’t, not really in the least bit, so Derek does not laugh. 

“I’m going to go,” he says with finality, stepping over Stiles’ legs to get to the open space of the foyer, where the front door waits for him. 

For some reason, perhaps because Stiles really is as drunk as Derek seems to think he is, this makes Stiles lividly angry. The idea that Derek won’t just fuck him even in spite of how Stiles is liable to barely remember it tomorrow makes him angry, surprises him, confuses him. To Derek’s back he says, “oh, because you’re such a nice fucking guy, is that it?” 

Derek has nothing to say to this. He’s out the door and gone, leaving Stiles sitting there feeling terrible. Without even thinking about it, Stiles reaches for Derek’s unfinished glass of wine and pounds it down, tossing the empty glass aside so the remaining few drops spill across his white carpet. He’s going to have to have the carpet torn out, from all of these wine stains.

**

On the soundstage for Jimmy Fallon the next day, Stiles is hungover and miserable, which is par for the course, so no one treats him any differently. The band soundchecks and it pounds against Stiles’ already pounding head. When he checks the mic his voice comes out groggy and lazy, like he’s barely putting any effort into it, because he is.

It used to be there was no greater joy for him in his life than to perform his work. To share it with people. It used to be the thought of having cameras in his face and a live studio audience was a dream he got to live. Now it is a burden he suffers through, like a tormented prisoner. 

“Gee, I wonder if you hate the fact that you’re here right now,” Erica snaps at him from her usual post, leaning both of her hands on her bass with a scowl. 

“I’m sick of playing this fucking song,” he grunts, rubbing at his watery eyes. He dreads going into hair and makeup, where his usual girls will cluck their tongues at him as they try to figure out how to make him not look like he drank two bottles of wine last night and treated Derek Hale like shit. 

“All three times you’ve played it, right.”

“Are we done?” Stiles shouts at a random crew member with a headset and a clipboard that looks somewhat official. “Is the sound checked enough, or?”

She blinks at him, and then clears her throat and says something about sure, fine, yeah, so Stiles takes the guitar off of his body and immediately hands it off to the first stage hand who dares to reach out and touch it. It’s a fairly recognizable guitar; it’s the one he’s been playing on since he first got started. He has tons of them now, obviously, because money has afforded him the luxury of an entire fleet of guitars among many other things, but that guitar is his signature. A comfort object.

Stiles wishes he could smash it, almost every time he touches it. 

Backstage, in the maze of tiny rooms filled with PA’s and writers and people frantically getting ready for filming, Stiles hides himself in his dressing room and hates that he isn’t allowed to be left alone. Makeup is there, waiting for him, and Lydia on the couch who doesn’t even look up at him as he enters the room, focused entirely on tapping some bullshit email out on her phone, and then his own reflection in the mirror. 

He has no other choice but to sit in the chair and stare at himself. The makeup girls are disappointed in him again, because he’s got bags and bloodshot eyes and he looks miserable, and there’s no way to fix that with makeup. It sells the image, at least. 

“Another hard day of being waited on hand and foot, I see,” Lydia drawls from the couch, and Stiles grits his teeth and ignores her. She’s right, is the thing. Stiles has everything he could’ve ever hoped for, and he treats it all like it’s a nightmare, a fucking nightmare, treats everyone around him like little gnats to be swatted at. 

To pile on, Scott knocks and comes into the room. He’s dressed already for the taping, his eyes clear and his clothes neat, so he looks bizarre in the mirror standing alongside Stiles. He says hello to the girls and glances with barely restrained hostility at Lydia, before focusing his eyes in on Stiles’ in the mirror, locking on, so Stiles has no choice but to look back. “You yelled at the crew,” he says, just like that. As though Stiles wasn’t there when it happened. 

Stiles pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes his eyes shut, while his hair gets brushed. “I had a long night last night.”

“With Derek Hale.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake –“

“No one goes in or out of your apartment without someone knowing about it,” he puts his hands up in surrender, as though that’s all the excuse he needs for lurking on Stiles’ every move and decision via the internet. “You know, if he’s being –“

“He’s not being anything, trust me,” he doesn’t want to get into details about last night, not even a little bit. The dead last thing he would ever want to do is admit to his childhood best friend that he half begged a dude to fuck him while he was drunk out of his mind, and got walked out on instead. “He’s – that’s done.”

Scott blinks at him in the mirror. The girls with their hands in Stiles’ hair are pretending like they’re not listening to this, but they are, of course they are, everyone is. Lydia most importantly. “Did he do something to –“

“Believe it or not, sometimes I’m the asshole.”

Scott is blinking some more. He wants more details, and he knows that he can’t get them, not with all these people, but there is never ever an opportunity to Scott to be alone with Stiles, because Stiles sees to that. It’s press tour, now. Stiles will not be alone for weeks on end, and then tour will start, and…honestly? Who knows if Stiles is going to make it to the end of this tour. 

“Me and the band have sorta been talking,” he says, and as he does, he’s already putting his hands up again, like he knows Stiles is going to go ballistic at the prospect of the band, well, banding together to sit around and talk about Stiles. “…and we’re sort of getting the idea that you can’t, uh, do this.”

Lydia puts her phone down. Now, she’s interested. 

“Do what?” He knows what. He feigns ignorance. 

“The album.”

“It’s already done.”

“The tour.”

“I’ve toured,” he looks away. He focuses on a spot on the mirror where there’s a fingerprint that didn’t get wiped away. “I can tour, I’ve done it before a half dozen times.” 

Scott is hesitating. He looks at Stiles in the mirror, then at Lydia, shifting his eyes between the two like he cannot decide which one he’s more nervous to say this in front of. “You come to practice drunk,” he starts, slow, nervous, “or you don’t come at all.”

“I wrote the god damn songs, I think I know how to fucking play them, I don’t need to –“

“…you don’t go anywhere you don’t have to go, you don’t talk to anyone, not even me. Your dad told me he hasn’t spoken to you in over two years.”

Stiles wants to get up and walk out of this room. He wants to have the luxury of storming out, of saying he doesn’t have to take this, of having somewhere to go and hide from the rest of the world. He doesn’t, is the thing. If he left this room and tried to go somewhere, they’d find him and drag him back and put him on stage. If he tried to storm out, he’d just wind up right back here, in this room. 

“I’m just wondering if maybe we shouldn’t, uh. Postpone.” 

It’s Lydia who speak up, this time. She says, “don’t be ridiculous, the tickets have all already been sold for the first leg. You can’t postpone.”

Like she hadn’t spoken at all, Scott keeps his eyes on Stiles. He comes around the front of him, around the girls quietly frosting Stiles’ face with coverup, and looks him right in the eyes. “You need help, dude.”

“Oh, please,” Lydia scoffs and stands up, full height. Though she is short, even with her heels on, she commands a presence that cannot be ignored. She seems huge, Amazonian, a Greek goddess lording herself over the rest of them like they’re just puny little mortals. “He’s a millionaire who feels sorry for himself, that’s it. He’s fine. Tour is fine.”

“I’m not talking to you,” Scott barks at her with narrowed eyes, before turning back to Stiles again. “We’ll boycott, man. If you don’t want to do it, we won’t do it. No one can force you to do anything.” 

Scott is naïve to really believe that. It is a nice fantasy, to imagine his band, most of them being kids he’s known his entire life, stepping in and saying Stiles is drowning, fucking drowning right in front of their eyes, and he can’t do it, they can’t make him, they’ll refuse to play and Stiles will refuse to replace them, and then what? 

Well, then, the tour would be remarketed as an acoustic, stripped tour. Just Stiles and his guitar and a microphone on a stage, and the fans would love it. Stiles hates the idea of being alone on that stage more than anything else, and he knows they’d make him do it. He has no other option. 

They’re all looking at him, waiting for him to say something. And there is nothing more that he wants, than to finally say what happened. To say he was beaten, abused, ridiculed, whittled down into a shell of himself, for two years straight by a guy who will never see the repercussions of those actions. To say he drinks himself half to death every single day. To say he can’t sing those songs where he admits it. To say he wanted Derek Hale to fuck him last night just to prove to himself that all men really are assholes. That no one really wants him. 

He can’t. He clears his throat and straightens up a bit in his seat. “What are you doing, talking to my dad?”

“He called me,” Scott defends, pointing at his chest with his index finger. “I don’t know how he got my number, maybe from my mother. He said you don’t even write.” 

Stiles can’t talk about that. He shakes his head. “We had a fight, I’ve got nothing to say to him.” Which is true, and isn’t, at the same time. “I can tour. I’ve done it before, I can tour.” 

Scott rubs at his forehead and looks utterly defeated. He looks like someone who had a best friend once and now has this fucking asshole, instead. Rich, arrogant, mean to staff, yelling at everyone, drinking all the time. That kind of a guy, that’s who Stiles is, now. “All right.”

**

Me, 1:59 AM: Hey. Hat in hand, here. I was really drunk and I treated you like absolute shit. It’s just how I am lately, and that makes two times I’ve been unforgivably shitty to you while drunk in a single month. It’s no excuse, but I am still very much living in the breakup. You don’t get a trophy for not fucking me when I was incoherent, but it was surprisingly decent, for such a notorious asshole. Anyway. Sorry. You see now why maybe you don’t want to hang around with me?  
Derek, 2:03 AM : Being drunk and an asshole is something I’m familiar with. So is having to apologize to people for it. So, it’s fine. I saw you on Jimmy Fallon. It was, ah, interesting.

Jimmy Fallon was not interesting. It was as close to a fucking disaster as any performance could be without actually being a full blown disaster. Stiles is enough of a practiced performer to be able to fake his way through almost anything, anymore, even the most severe of beat downs. He got on stage every night after being punched in the face or pushed around or called some series of horrible names, and somehow managed to get through it, for a long time. 

Apparently, he is reaching his breaking point for putting on a brave face. 

There was champagne, back stage. Stiles wound up drinking most of it. He wound up on stage barely able to play his guitar, slurring his way through the song like he didn’t remember the words, fumbling along. It was bad enough that when Jimmy came out afterwards to put his arm around Stiles’ shoulders to thank him, the guy couldn’t help himself but to laugh. It was that bad. 

He had gone home after that and spent the entire night dumping all the alcohol he had in his apartment down the drain. Bottle after bottle, watching it go down, down down, gone. The trash tinkled with glass as he put it next to his front door for the maid to deal with tomorrow morning while he’d be out at the taping for Ellen, and then he sat on his couch and stared at the ceiling. 

The Rolling Stone article sat there and mocked him, for a while. Then, he texted Derek. 

Me, 2:15 AM : So, I don’t handle being reminded that my ex-boyfriend exists very well. And they’ve got me out here performing songs about him. My fault. It is, after all, what I do.   
Derek, 2:18 AM : I get the sense you wish you had had an extra year to process, or something.  
Me, 2:20 AM : An extra ten years, actually. I’ve got a contract.  
Derek, 2:21 AM : Oh, I’m familiar with contracts.   
Me, 2:25 AM : See, I wouldn’t mind singing about that relationship. It’s my way of getting things out. This one is different. I needed more time. They wouldn’t let me have it. I can’t say this to my camp, but I gotta say it to someone so I pick you – I am fucking drowning.   
Derek, 2:28 AM : I’m sorry. If it makes you feel better, that album is going to sell. Big time.   
Me, 2:30 AM : It does and it doesn’t, but thanks. I know this is weird and we don’t know each other, but I am in desperate need of a friend.   
Me, 2:30 AM : Remember when you came over and you said that there were benefits to the two of us hanging out and you wanted to do me, big time?   
Me, 2:31 AM : Well, there are benefits to us hanging out. And I wouldn’t mind having sex. And I kind of need someone to talk to. All these things seem to lead to us hanging out and I know you’re busy and I’m busy but having someone to see in New York would be really good for me. Not to put too much pressure on you. You contacted me for a quick fuck, I know.   
Derek, 2:34 AM : It actually wasn’t for a quick fuck. I asked you out. Remember?   
Me, 2:36 AM : Well. I would love to go to dinner with you. In two weeks.   
Derek, 2:38 AM : I know a place where they’ll definitely take our picture.  
Me, 2:40 AM : To be clear, and crystal, I do not intend to get drunk, and I do intend to wind up in your bedroom. And I gotta get fucked. I’m sick of this whole fragile out of a relationship that ruined my life thing. I need to figure out how to climb out of the hole.   
Me, 2:42 AM : And to be even more clear, I don’t want to be your boyfriend. I want to see you when I’m in New York. I want our pictures taken and I want to get something out of it, the same thing you want to get out of it. But I do not under any circumstances want to be in a relationship. Is that a problem?  
Derek, 3:11 AM : No problem with me.


	2. Nashville

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am extremely reluctant to say what kind of music I’m imagining Stiles makes. Frankly, because I honestly only get so far in imagining in it before, like, another artist that already exists takes over my brain. I honestly have no clue. Uh, alt? LMFAO!! In my mind when I’m writing about these nutso songs that he writes I’m likening them to songs that already exist, because I can’t fucking come up with songs that good. If I could, I wouldn’t be here writing this I’ll tell you that much. 
> 
> So it’s hard to be like “oh this song is so good everyone loves it it’s a 10/10 it’s great...” and then give no indication of what it sounds like. But like, I can’t come up with that. I’m just sort of being vague to lend more room to the imagination. Hopefully not too vague lmfao.

The day that Stiles’ relationship with Matt Harding ended, he was staying in the Nashville apartment. It was a really nice place – he had it painted dark blue and all the furniture he picked was from cool antique stores and all the art he hung up was done by local artists. It was in walking distance of the best coffee in the city, the best bar downtown, the best restaurants. More important than all that, it was the first place that Stiles had ever lived all by himself, the first thing he spent big money on after he had the big money to spend. Whenever he would think about home, he of course would think of his kid bedroom in his dad’s house, all the way in California at the edge of the woods.

But whenever he would think about the place he felt the most like himself. His safe space. He used to think of that Nashville apartment. 

On the night when Stiles and Matt were done, they got in a fight. Although, towards the end there, Stiles wouldn’t call these altercations ‘fights’ so much as ‘cataclysmic events’. Volcanoes erupting, earthquakes shaking buildings down, earth colliding with meteors, that sort of a thing. Stiles doesn’t remember what he said or what he did that had set the entire thing off. He doesn’t remember if he was to blame for it or even if he necessarily deserved it – it only comes back to him in brief flashes and short bursts, anymore, whenever he dares to think about it at all. 

What he remembers most is thinking that Matt was going to kill him. He remembers one second he was saying something, and the next Matt’s hands were on his neck and they were sprawled out on the bed and Stiles couldn’t breathe and he clawed at Matt’s hands but the grip wouldn’t loosen and he remembers thinking that Matt wanted him dead. Or maybe he didn’t, and he didn’t realize what he was doing, but in the moment, that didn’t really matter. 

The look in his eyes. That’s what Stiles remembers the most. The _look in his eyes._

It was over after what felt like a century. Boyd came bursting into the room and went insane, ballistic, was pulling Matt off of Stiles and shouting about _what the fuck is going on,_ while Stiles sat up and coughed and sucked in these great big breaths like he had been trapped underwater for hours, hours, hours. In the first few moments after, he almost couldn’t remember what had happened – he checked himself to see if maybe he were wet. Had he been drowning? The trauma of it was so immediate, it didn’t feel like it had really happened, even as Boyd had to enlist the help of Stiles’ second security guard to get Matt out of his apartment. The sound of the scuffle was distant, buried underneath the roaring in Stiles’ ears. 

Matt was a big guy. Six and a half feet tall. He was an athlete, for Christ’s sake, of course it took two security guards to get him out. 

Boyd came back in the bedroom and Stiles was sitting on the floor next to the bedside table, where the lamp somehow wound up overturned, the shade rolled off, the bulb bright and too blinding to look at directly. The first thing he had done when he had control over his mental faculties was to get off of that bed - he couldn’t be in it for even another second. 

Boyd had looked right at him and said, “what the hell was that?” 

Stiles didn’t know if anyone in his security knew. He was sure that Lydia had no clue, because she hadn’t been aware of anything but herself and the money for years at that point. And he was certain that the band didn’t know, because he had gotten very good at hiding it, even when it had gotten to its worst point.

But surely security heard the fights through the walls. Boyd had never said anything about it up until that night – in Nashville, when he had walked in on it, and there was no point in pretending he hadn’t seen it. 

“Stiles, does he –“ 

“Don’t let him back in again,” Stiles said, cutting Boyd off before he could ask, because he still didn’t want to admit it. 

Boyd had seen, and still, Stiles could not talk about it. 

He was crying, wiping the tears away fast in the hopes that they wouldn’t be seen. “If he comes – if he comes back, don’t let him in. I don’t want to…” do this anymore, is what he was thinking. He couldn’t do it anymore. 

Boyd had asked no questions. Stiles blocked Matt’s number because he didn’t have the balls to even tell him to his face that he wasn’t welcome in Stiles’ life anymore. He just told his security never to let him around, blocked him, had all his emails sent to spam. That was one good thing about being famous – it was easy to build a fortress, to keep anyone out. It is anyone’s guess as to why he hadn’t done it sooner, but then, it doesn’t matter. Stiles knew that Matt was out of control, perhaps because Stiles let it get that far in the first place, and he knew that it would only get worse, and he knew that it had to be done. 

What’s sick is that Stiles still mourned the relationship. The shit show that it was, he still cried over it. 

Stiles slept on the couch that night in fits. He couldn’t sleep in the bed. Couldn’t go in the bedroom at all. Couldn’t barely stand to be in the apartment. Boyd never mentioned it again, because discretion and privacy is half of his job; but Matt was gone.

And that is why Stiles got rid of the Nashville apartment. His home away from home, gone overnight.

**

“Hey,” Erica puts a half eaten bagel down on the table in front of where Stiles is hunched over his phone instead of practicing, and then next to it, a piece of paper that Stiles really should recognize. He blinks at it a couple of times, frowning as he slowly tucks his phone away into his pocket. It’s the set list he had cobbled together last night after Lydia had thrown a fit at him about how _tour is coming Stiles, you’re not barely ready Stiles, what fucking songs are you even playing Stiles_.

“Yeah?”

“What the fuck is this?” She barks at him, gesturing to the list again as though it’s sprouted a mouth and learned to talk. “There’s not even half of the new album on this thing.”

Stiles had expected this. He sits up straighter and tries to make himself look like someone who’s in charge, here – even though he knows that he isn’t. His tour, his album, his life, but none of it is really his. “I think it’s fine.” 

“You’re fucking opening with Row? I haven’t played Row since I was twenty-two years old, who gives a fuck about Row? As an opener?” 

Stiles grits his teeth. Row is a song from his third album that people had really liked, yes, but that has mostly faded into obscurity as far as even his diehard fans are concerned. It wouldn’t even make his artist essentials playlist on Apple Music for Christ’s sake, and here he is, opening the tour with it. “I think it sets the –“

“Nashville isn’t even on it,” she goes on like Stiles hasn’t even spoken. She picks up her bagel and takes a vicious bite of it, so her purple lipstick gets left behind on some of the bread that doesn’t make it into her mouth. “Nashville isn’t even fucking on it.” 

“Nashville doesn’t need to be on it,” he says, and he’s angling for nonchalance in his tone – as though the mere mention of Nashville, either as a place that exists or a song that he wrote – does not make him want to find the nearest bar and drink himself into a stupor inside of it. It’s no use. Their conversation has caught the attention of the rest of the band, the crew, and worst of all, Lydia. 

She hasn’t seen the set list yet. Stiles had been deliberately keeping it from her. Now, she stands up from where she had earlier been prostrated out on the couch drinking coffee and glaring at her phone, and starts coming directly for them, across the room. Past the band, the crew all standing around looking like deer in headlights. 

Stiles has this thought of leaping up and running for his life, but he knows he can’t outrun her. Or, any of this. 

“What’s wrong with the set list?” She asks as soon as she’s in ear shot. Scott is coming over, too, a copy of the same list clutched in his hands. He knows that everyone here also thought that the thing was insane bananas cuckoo and likely suspected a drunken psychopath had created it – but the only one with balls enough to say anything about it directly to Stiles’ face is, of course, Erica. 

Erica doesn’t even say anything. She doesn’t have to. She hands Lydia her copy, and it only takes Lydia approximately three seconds to frown, look at Stiles, and shake her head. “Stiles, which tour is this?”

Stiles shifts in his seat. “I’ve told you a dozen times, I can’t –“

“This isn’t the tour for your second album, or your third album, or your fourth. So why is there more from any of those three than from the actual record we’re touring?”

Stiles hadn’t known what he had been thinking when he made the list last night. He was drinking, so everyone’s assumption that a drunken psychopath had made it was more or less spot on, but it still doesn’t explain how he thought he’d be able to get away with it. He had cut nearly half of the record off of it. Even he knows he has to play most of the album if he’s going to go on tour with it, but that’s exactly the fucking problem – he didn’t want to tour it to begin with. Maybe it was some weird cry for help, a final plea to not make him do it, he honestly isn’t sure. 

“I can’t play Nashville,” he focuses in on something he might actually be able to make go his way, instead of fighting to have most of the album on the chopping block, because that’s a losing game. “Come on. I’m not doing that fucking song, it’s not –“

“Nashville is the best song on the record,” Lydia tells him, and Erica nods emphatically like she agrees, while Scott just stands there and scuffs his feet on the concrete underfoot. “Everyone else is going to agree and demand to hear that song on the tour. You can’t cut Nashville.” 

“I’m not playing it.” 

“So, he doesn’t want to play it,” Scott cuts in nervously, so all eyes swivel to him. “What’s the big deal? Radiohead won’t play Creep anymore, and people still pay to see them. It’s just one song.” 

But it isn’t just one song. It’s what the song represents. Lydia probably barely listened to the fucking thing, could barely recite a single lyric from it, but she’s going to argue for it, because she needs to make Stiles play it. Maybe she thinks Stiles hiding from it will only make its power over him, the power of everything it’s about, even stronger. Maybe she thinks she’s doing him a favor by forcing him to play it. Maybe she just wants to prove she can make him do whatever she wants him to. 

“I’m going to redo this,” she holds up the set list and turns to start walking away. She’s going to put Nashville dead center, make it the main event, the climax, the part of the show that everyone talks about when they walk out of the arena at the end of the night. Stiles can only allow himself to imagine getting in front of a microphone and broadcasting the darkest time of his life for all to hear. Having to do that in person. Having to hear people sing it back to him. 

When he thinks of Nashville, he thinks of an overturned lamp and a bed he can’t get back into. 

Stiles knows he’s being crazy. He can feel himself being psychotic even as he leaps out of his seat, as he grips the edge of the table and flips it over. It smashes on its top – the coffee he had been drinking goes everywhere, spilling out onto the floor, the pool of it edging towards Lydia’s feet even as she leaps back in surprise with Erica and Scott. The whole room quiets down, because Stiles is making a huge gigantic scene in the middle of rehearsals, and now there’s a mess on the floor, and everyone is looking at him. 

“I begged you to let me take it off the album, I begged you to let me release it when I wanted to,” he shouts at her, pointing an incriminating finger. She just stands there, mouth a grim line, even as Erica starts backing away to try and escape being a part of it, as Scott rubs at the back of his neck and shakes his head. “I told you I’d rather fucking get on stage and chew glass than sing it live, and you could not fucking care less!” 

The room is so quiet you could hear a pin drop. The crew stands there and makes eyes at each other like they’re wondering if maybe they should clear out, but they won’t, because they’ve got a front row ticket to Stiles’ complete mental breakdown. 

“It’s just a song,” she tells him, in this condescending tone that makes Stiles wants to scream at the top of his lungs. 

It isn’t just a song. It isn’t. It’s partly his fault because he hasn’t told anyone, not a soul, what that song is about, no one, and yet he expects them all to know anyway. He expects Lydia to just know. He puts his hands on his hips and he looks across the room – the blinking eyes and the frozen people and all of them think he’s fucking crazy. They think he’s drunk again. They think this is an overreaction, and why wouldn’t they? 

“Fine,” he spits at her, throwing his arms out in defeat. “Put it on the setlist. Force me to fucking play it every night. I don’t give a shit.” 

He turns on his heel and storms out. He leaves the table overturned and his coffee spilled all over the floor and the papers strewn everywhere. He leaves everyone staring at his retreating back, leaves even as he hears Erica shout, “so we’re not practicing, then?” He’s out the door and into the hallway with a slam, storming down the hall even though he has no idea where he’s going. 

This was not the exit, or the way he usually comes in. This is some back part of the building he’s never been in before, but he doesn’t care. He keeps walking. His hands are shaking and he shoves them into the pockets of his jeans and breathes in and out, as deep as he can.

“Stiles,” that’s Scott’s voice, because of course it is. Of course no one else but Scott is going to come running after him, even in the wake of something like that. He pads up behind Stiles on quick feet, slowing to a stop as they meet in the center of the hall. It’s white, like an asylum, and bright, and Stiles is hungover and frowning and bloodshot, again, and Scott is looking at him like he barely fucking knows him anymore, again. “What the hell?”

“What the hell, what?”

“What the hell was that?” He gestures to the door, where on the other side, Stiles imagines everyone is just standing around wondering if they’re going to be getting any work done today, or not. They have Good Morning America in two fucking days, and the album is coming out in two fucking days, and Stiles is throwing temper tantrums in the fucking rehearsals, for Christ’s sake. “What is the deal with that fucking song?”

“It –“

“You have written breakup songs before. You have written songs as sad as that one. What is it about this, what is it about this fucking guy? What aren’t you telling me? Why aren’t you talking to your fucking dad?” 

“I’m going to play the god damn song,” he growls, running his hands through his hair angrily. “I’m going to play the _god damn song_ , so just don’t worry about it.” 

“There’s something the matter with you,” he accuses, and he’s mad. He’s really really mad. “And I wish I knew what it was. But I can’t remember the last time you and I even spoke, and I mean, really spoke. I know it was him, I know it, but I can’t –“ he pauses, and he takes a deep breath. “I can’t fucking help you, when I don’t know what the problem is.”

“I said, I’ll play the song,” he repeats, and Scott blinks at him, like he’s looking at a stranger. “That’s what this is all about, getting me to play it.” 

“It’s about _you_. Not the fucking album, not the tour, _you_.” 

Him. Me, Stiles thinks. Me. _Me_? Isn’t the album and the tour all he is? Stiles pinches the bridge of his nose and shakes his head, and he knows that he can’t act like that. It’s unprofessional, and more importantly, fucking unhinged. He’s freaking the people around him out. He’s freaking himself out, too, if he’s being honest. There is unaddressed trauma that lives inside of him and rears its head in the ugliest possible ways imaginable, and sitting around doing nothing but talking about the songs he wrote about it, singing the songs he wrote about it, all of that? It doesn’t exactly help matters. 

But, again. This is something that Scott does not know. And as a result, it is something Stiles cannot hold him accountable for. 

“I just didn’t get a lot of sleep last night,” he says, and Scott sighs through his nose. That excuse, again. “And that song is…hard. It’s hard to sing it.” 

Scott could say a lot of things, at this moment. He could accuse Stiles of lying, and he could demand to know what really happened, and he could say that he knows Matt did something to him, maybe did lots of things to him, he could force Stiles to finally admit it out loud instead of dancing around the subject in metaphors written in his notebooks. But he doesn’t do any of that. He just looks at Stiles and frowns, because he’s likely very afraid that anything he says or does in this moment could send Stiles off the deep end. 

“Why don’t you try playing it a few times, just by yourself?” He suggests, voice low. “It…tour is in two months, man. Everyone in the world is going to hear that song, and it really is the best song on the record. Maybe just…numb yourself to it.” 

Stiles has been practicing the art of numbing himself against particular hurts for almost a year, now. Longer, even. The idea of feeling nothing has been alluring for a long time. That’s half of what Nashville is even about, in the first place. The desire to finally stop feeling anything, anything at all. 

“You know you have to go back in there,” he points to the door, and Stiles nods his head. Yes, he knows. “If you ever wanna talk, you know you can talk to me.” 

There’s not very much that Stiles has to say, is the thing.

**

Me, 4:45 AM : You want to come to my album release party? It’ll be fun. Or, a nightmare. Both.  
Derek, 4:48 AM : A fun nightmare? Can’t wait.  
Derek, 4:49 AM : You really want me to come? Because I will.  
Me, 4:50 AM : I actually wasn’t expecting you to be awake. What are you doing up at five in the morning?  
Derek, 4:52 AM : What are YOU doing up at five in the morning?  
Me, 4:53 AM: I’m at good fucking morning America.  
Derek, 4:55 AM : Oh right, GFMA.  
Me, 4:57 AM : Come to the party. Seriously. It’s going to be so miserable, I need you there for eye candy at least.  
Derek, 5:00 AM : I will come. But I’m bringing my sister. She’s sort of a fan.  
Derek, 5:03 AM : You know, I better not undersell it. She thinks you’re a tortured genius. She’s going to shit herself.  
Me, 5:05 AM : Whoa whoa whoa, your sister is a disciple of my good word? And you played so coy…’oh, what? Stiles who? Sea Monster? What?’ HA!  
Derek, 5:07 AM : Okay, so, I know more songs than Sea Monster. I’ve been to a show. Or two. At her behest.  
Me, 5:09 AM : You’re a Stilinskinator too, just admit it, it’s okay.  
Derek, 5:11 AM : Don’t you have an America to be saying good morning to?

**

The album release party is being held in a trendy Manhattan bar that they’ve bought out and closed for the night – it’s decorated in deep greens, with a giant blown up picture of the album cover hanging above their heads like a flag, or a beacon of some kind. There’s pictures of Stiles, too, from the album shoot. He looks miserable and tortured, which is the point, so no one takes them too seriously; it’s just an act, part of the ploy to sell his next breakup record, after all.

There are trees, paper mache’ and painted to look burned and charred in places, standing everywhere, next to tables, by the bar, all over the place. People keep running into them and laughing, spilling their drinks on the floor. Stiles is camped out at a table by the bar with Erica and Scott, drinking and fielding people’s congratulations and praise like the queen accepting visitors. 

The album is playing loud over their heads, Stiles’ drawling voice seeming to be everywhere all at once – but luckily, there are so many people here talking, that Stiles can barely hear it over all that noise. 

“It’s the best album yet, it’s a real _body of work_ ,” some guy Stiles vaguely recognizes as being a friend of a friend of Erica’s is saying to him now, taking up space at their table and practically throwing himself at Stiles’ feet. “People don’t release bodies of work, anymore. You release bodies of work. I mean, this is the most authentic any of your work has ever been. It feels so much less –“

“Yeah,” Stiles cuts him off, reaching out to pat him on the back a couple of times in thanks. “That’s cool, man.”

The stranger smiles at him, and at least seems to have the presence of mind to take the hint and get lost. 

Good Morning America had been fine. They had forced him out into the square to stand there in the rising sun, with his guitar and his band – the hosts were nice to him, because they always are, even though Stiles was only a few notches above surly. It was the first time he was out performing for his actual fans since this whole ordeal even began, and it wasn’t god awful. He played the lead single and one of the other very few up-tempo songs on the record, and they had gone nuts and most of them already knew all the words because it leaked a week earlier, and it was…fine. 

Fine. People are coming up to him telling him it’s his greatest work yet, and all he can come up with is _fine_. To be fair, he’s certain that he could release a record that’s nothing but his recorded farts and there’d still be at least a few ass-kissers who would come up and tell him it’s genius, so who knows what any of these people truly think? He drinks some more and tries to get it off, the unshakable demon on his back, whispering in his ear to be a miserable killjoy, to hate this, to despise this party thrown for him. 

“Um, is that seriously Derek fucking Hale?” Erica shrieks, sitting up straight and angling her body and neck to get a better look across the room. 

Scott whips around, aghast, searching the crowd for what Erica is looking at. Stiles does the same, turning slowly as he sips. Derek is there, all right, in an all black suit like he’s going to someone’s funeral or attending a business meeting as CEO or something, and he looks…well. He looks like someone’s wet fucking dreams come to life. Stiles’, maybe, but the jury is still out on that one, so Stiles just silently approves of his look and shrugs his shoulders. “That’s him.”

“What is he doing here?” Scott demands, as though this is the single greatest injustice that has ever been done to him, personally. “What the hell is he doing here?” 

“I invited him,” Stiles shrugs again, and Erica chortles this insane laugh, like a sea witch who finally got her hands on a dolphin, or something. 

“It’s true what they print, then. You’re fucking him,” she points a finger at him. “You’re fucking Derek Hale.”

“I’m not,” he says, because it’s true. For now, it is, at least. They keep printing that they’re fucking, all right, and people apparently have on occasion thought that Stiles and Derek would make a nice couple if only for the fact that they’re two of the only really famous men who like men. Every day there’s a new article about something that didn’t happen, written about the two of them, and Stiles could not care less. It’s press. Big deal. “He’s nice. He’s sort of funny.”

“Sort of funny,” Erica repeats, and then makes a big show out of miming a blowjob with her thumb and her tongue pressed against her cheek. “I bet he is.” 

“Why is he here?” Scott demands again, incensed. 

“Because Stiles is fucking him,” she shouts to be heard over the music and the noise. It’s loud enough that people turn to look, the mention of Stiles and fucking in the same sentence drawing attention, especially at this particular event. 

“I’m not fucking him,” Stiles says, but Scott still looks mad. He is under the impression that Stiles has gone and gotten himself another asshole to get all destroyed emotionally over, and that he needs to stop that from happening at all costs, because for god’s sake, Stiles is still looney over the last guy. There is perhaps nothing any of them can say to make him not feel that way, so Stiles excuses himself and starts to move through the crowd to get to where Derek is standing. 

It takes a while. People keep stopping him to talk about the music, to say nice things to him. Stiles has to brush them all off with thanks and waves and insisting he’s got somewhere to be across the way. But eventually, he gets to the buffet table, right next to the giant cake with Stiles’ face on it, and there Derek Hale is. 

He looks even more striking up close. Like a magazine ad that’s stepped off the page and come to stand in real life, reeking like expensive cologne and aftershave. He’s tall and broad and his hair is shiny. Stiles swallows and almost feels nervous, for some reason, as he approaches. 

“You came,” Stiles says to him with a thin smile. Derek smiles at him, and Stiles forgot what it was like to have that damned smile directed right at him. It’s off-putting, to be smiled at like that – Stiles gets the idea it’s the smile he learned in acting class, when he was a kid. The movie star smile. 

“I said I would,” he gestures around the room. “Trees.”

“Forest fire,” Stiles corrects him, and Derek nods his head. Then they’re just standing there, smiling at each other, because Stiles does not know how to talk to him. Or, anyone, these days. 

It’s a lucky thing, then, that Stiles’ periphery catches sight of the fact that there’s someone else standing there, with Derek. His sister. It must be, because she’s clutching a copy of The Standing Dead like her very life depends on it, and she’s got this face-drained-of-color, awestruck, wide eyed look on her face. 

Stiles turns his attention to her, and they meet eyes. She opens her mouth to say something, and nothing comes out. “You must be Derek’s sister,” he says, reaching a hand out. 

She stares at it for a millisecond, before her own hand flies out to grab it and shake, shake, shake, almost violently. “Cora, it’s Cora,” she says hastily, still shaking, and shaking his hand. “I’m – the biggest fan.”

“You can let go of his hand, now,” Derek says, and Cora’s cheeks redden and she releases, goes back to gripping her copy of the record again. 

“I saw the Free At Last tour, like, six times.” 

Stiles raises his eyebrows, turns to Derek. “You were at a couple of these viewings, I assume?” 

“Well, it’s the record with Sea Monster, my favorite song, so.” 

“I think you’re the greatest living artist,” she blurts at him, and Stiles laughs, because that is a fucking hilarious thing to say. “Would you mind…?” She’s holding the record out to him, and Stiles has been on the receiving end of this gesture so many times it’s a knee jerk reaction when he reaches out and takes it from her, digging in his pocket to produce one of the half dozen sharpies he had been given in preparation for doing copious amounts of signing things. 

He rips the lid of the sharpie off with his teeth, while Cora stands there and stares at him like she suspects he’s a hologram, still, and Derek just watches him. 

_To the superior Hale sibling_ , he writes, followed by a flourish of his signature. He used to fill notebooks with his signature in high school, fantasizing about being someone who anyone would give enough of a shit about to get a signature from. Now, he’s standing here at a party thrown for him signing a CD for Derek Hale’s fucking sister, of all people on this earth. 

He hands the CD back to her with a smirk and she cradles it like it’s the Holy Grail, as though she’s afraid if she touches it too much she’ll smudge the ink. “Thank you,” she tells him, and she really means it. “I’ve bought some of your signed CD’s from your website before, but this is…”

“He’s not the second coming of Christ,” Derek informs her, flashing Stiles an apologetic smile, like he’s embarrassed his sister is prostrating herself in front of him. Likely, in the car ride over, he had explicitly told her to rein it in, and now she’s here, doing anything but that. 

“Aren’t I?”

They lock eyes. There’s something very pointed in the eye contact, something Stiles has not felt for a long time. They’re standing here, with Derek’s sister hovering and staring at Stiles, with tons of people all around them, the fucking lead single blaring over their heads, and they’re really going to look at each other like that. Stiles is nervous again, his hands sweaty, like he’s not at a party being thrown in his honor, but like he’s some teenager. That’s how Derek makes him feel. 

“Cora, why don’t you go get a drink?” Derek suggests out of nowhere. 

As she moves to do just that, Stiles waves his hand and says, “oh, I’ll get it for you, what do you like?”

She gapes at him like he’s just offered her his firstborn child, the idea of Stiles Stilinski running to get a drink for her and not the other way around is that awe inspiring to her. But before she can say anything, Derek shakes his head and gives Stiles a look. “That was code for _I want to talk to Stiles alone for a second_.”

“Oh,” Stiles blinks, and then gives Cora an apologetic smile. She looks between the two of them again and again, as though she’s trying to figure out what possible thing that her brother could have to say to Stiles that she’s not to be privy to, and she seems almost…irritated. It must be a sibling thing. She goes all the same, off and away with her signed copy to the bar. 

They’re as alone as they can be in the space, all the noise affording them some modicum of a personal conversation. “She’s horrified at the idea of me putting my hands on you.”

Stiles laughs out loud, spilling his drink a bit as he does so. 

“I’m serious,” he says, but he’s smirking. “She told me the stories better not be true or she’ll kill me. Apparently you’re off limits.” 

“So you sent her off,” he gestures, to where he can just make out Cora’s glittery blue dress at the bar. “So you could…what? Take me into a dark corner?”

“I’m still taking you to dinner,” he reminds Stiles, as though Stiles could ever forget it. “And I still plan on putting my hands on you, in spite of her objections.” 

Stiles has to shove his drink into his face just to hide his insane smile in the wake of someone saying something like that to him. He has been flirted with loads, and loads, and loads, enough times you’d think he’d be used to it, by now. But when he got with Matt, after the honeymoon period of the relationship wore off and he became…well. The guy who inspired the record. After he became that, there wasn’t a lot of flirting. 

It has been a long time since someone has been nice to him, just for the sake of it. Yes, Derek wants to get in his pants, but it’s organic. It’s not a precursor to getting slammed into something, it’s just…flirting. Stiles doesn’t know what to say. He used to be good at this. Now, he’s sixteen again and flushed and avoiding eye contact. 

“So that’s why you’re in your sex god outfit, because you’re seducing me.”

Derek glances down at himself, as though he has genuinely forgotten what he was wearing. “Sex god outfit,” he repeats with a scoff, like that’s a ridiculous accusation. “It’s a suit.”

“It’s a mating ritual, but sure.”

“You like it?”

“Jesus Christ,” Stiles laughs, then covers his mouth with his hand. People are looking at them, he realizes – out of the corners of their eyes, murmuring to one another, because they’re looking at a tabloid come to life. Stiles Stilinski and Derek Hale, at of all places the launch of his album, flirting with one another in front of the entire world. “Sure. It’s – you know.”

Before Derek can say anything else to that, there’s a presence very suddenly _there_ right beside Stiles; Stiles jumps back in surprise, as Scott enters the conversation out of the clear blue sky. He’s got a bar glass clutched tightly in his hand, and the other he’s got balled into a fist at his side, and he’s glaring at Derek Hale like he brought a dead body to the party, or something. For all intents and purposes, as far as Scott is concerned, he did. 

“Hi,” Scott yes, no inflection in his tone. He’s come over here to be a cockblock, most likely. 

“This is my best friend,” Stiles introduces with a sigh, pointing with a single finger at Scott. “He’s the drummer in my band, and he hates you.”

Derek is amused. He smiles. “Oh.”

“I just came over to say hi,” Scott says, but his attempt at nonchalant falls flat. “How did you get in?”

“I put him on the list,” Stiles says to him in a low voice, shooting Derek an apologetic look before focusing in on Scott. “You’re being a dick.” 

“Lydia wants you to make a speech,” he goes on, lifting a single eyebrow. Stiles palms his forehead and huffs out a great big sigh – right, the speech. He has to make a speech. He always makes a speech at these stupid fucking things, typically thanking his producers and his co-writers, though there were no other writers on this one, and typically he’ll go on and on about what an honor it is to work with such talented people and how the album is his greatest triumph or some other nonsense. 

He normally writes it ahead of time or at least jots down bullet points. He has nothing. He had been hoping to avoid it altogether, but of course, Lydia is going to force him to do it if only because she can tell he’s trying to avoid it. 

“I really gotta…” he starts saying to Derek, but Derek is already nodding and smiling at him, gesturing for him to go ahead. They meet eyes one last time, and Stiles wishes he could stay here to let Derek be nice to him some more, but he turns and walks away, toward the front of the room where Lydia is pointedly flailing at him to _come here_.

She’s in a dark green dress to match the décor, her hair piled high on top of her head, and she’s frowning at him. She gestures some more, even as he’s within ten feet of her, and once she’s in ear shot, she says, “I see you’re having a miserable time with Derek Hale.”

“He’s a hellacious nightmare, yes,” he agrees, and she points to the microphone. 

“You’re not shitfaced, are you?”

“No, I’m not.” He’d be offended by that statement, but it’s honestly a fair question. 

“Just say something not shitty.”

He hesitates for a second. _Not shitty_ sets the bar as low as it could possibly be, but Stiles’ mouth goes dry and he doesn’t know if he has anything not shitty to say, anymore. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he taps the microphone a couple of times to get everyone’s attention. Lydia makes some big waves at someone off in the distance, and the music over their heads gets turned off, as people stop talking and slowly turn to look at him there at the front of the room. 

They clap for him. This is his party, after all. Stiles bears the applause like a seasoned professional, nodding his head and smiling. “Thanks,” he says, and then they all go quiet again, because they think he’s about to say something really important, or smart, or just… something. He clears his throat and looks across the room, at all the dead trees, the metaphor he had made when he came up with the title track.

Like some burned out, hollow shell left behind after a forest fire. That’s how he felt. It’s how he still feels, even now. 

“Um,” he says, and he ducks his head a bit. “Thank you to everyone who, uh, contributed on this record. My band. Um, Nate, who produced most of it.” Then he’s out of things to say. He still has a drink in his hand, so he quickly takes a sip just for something to do that isn’t standing here staring blankly out at the silent crowd, all staring at him. “I…it’s hard to believe this is my fifth record. It’s nearly been ten years. Um…yeah.” He looks to Lydia, who’s looking at him like he’s still got a lot more to say, and he sighs through his nose and blinks. “I hope that nobody can relate to this one, because it sucks to feel like this all the time,” he goes for a joke, but it falls flat, because that’s not very funny. “When I wrote this record I thought that nobody was going to hear it for a very long time, but now it’s out and you’ve all heard it and I guess you like it, so that’s good. I didn’t have anything else to write about, so…if I had, I wouldn’t have put this record out. It’s uh…the worst. The worst thing. I’ve made a career on telling people about my life and I guess that means everyone thinks they’re entitled to it now, or something.”

Lydia is face palming in the corner of his eye, and Stiles knows he’s rambling and he’s not making any sense and everyone is looking around at each other wondering if this is part of the punch line, or just Stiles’ weird sense of humor. He clears his throat and shakes his head, angles for wrapping it up. 

“…I go on tour in a couple of months and I’m sure you’ll all be there, so…see you then.” 

There’s a smattering of applause, and the music comes back on as Stiles’ saving grace. He steps away from the microphone and he frowns. Drinks his drink. Lydia grabs him by his arm and says, “is it at all possible for you to not be a sad sack of shit anymore?” 

“No,” he answers, honestly. “I’m miserable. I told you that.”

She hold her arms out, the party, the album, all of this, set up just for him, his friends, celebrities, people telling him he’s great, his music being celebrated, his life being celebrated. “You’re a fucking martyr,” she snaps at him, “you have everything you wanted, and you hate it.” And then she storms away, angry with him because he’s made an asshole of himself at yet another function and he’s being ungrateful and he’s getting drunk again. 

Stiles stands there with his free hand in his pocket. Nashville is on, over his head.

**

_…Oh, poor Stiles. Won’t someone be nice to you? Even just once?_

_His latest record suggests that yet another person has been unforgivably mean to him, and now we’re all going to have to hear about it for the next two years, until someone else is unforgivably mean to him, and we’ll start the cycle all over again. The album itself is fine at times, good at times, better at others, but overall smacks of the same old same from the twenty-six year old songwriter. It is not a work of genius, not by a long shot, but it has some shining moments that cannot be overlooked – Nashville stands out, an over the top ballad where he tells us he hates being alive, which isn’t anything new…_

_…The Standing Dead is by far his best work to date. It shows a certain evolution of songwriting that most artists only dream of achieving; a signature sound and a familiar pen, but delivered to us in an entirely new way. Moments on this record feel like being there, or like you’re the one who’s getting hurt, because the writing is so vivid and specific. Personally, I love Nashville, but after hearing Stiles say he’ll never go back there again, I’m thinking I too may boycott the entire city just for solidarity’s sake…_

_…The album as a whole comes across as whiny, but then, what else do you expect from Stilinski, at this point? The title track is sad as shit, and Nashville is sad as shit, and the entire record, even the opening track that was clearly written before this particular relationship went downhill, is sad as shit. So yes, it’s whiny. It’s whiny, but it’s good, and at least now we get a solid idea for why Stiles was falling down drunk on the stage for Jimmy Fallon. Unsurprisingly, he’s been hurt big time, and I guess we all have to feel bad for him…_

**

There are no photographers, no gaggles of teenaged girls, no crowds at all, when Derek and Stiles walk up to the place Derek had picked to take Stiles out to dinner. Nobody had known that they would be there – it’s almost quiet outside, as quiet as New York streets can ever be, as they approach the front door. Stiles has never actually been to this place before, because it’s a relatively new restaurant, and sometime around two years ago, he stopped going out to restaurants altogether.

He got sick of people taking pictures of him, halfway through his relationship with Matt, around the same time he stopped accepting calls from his father. Everyone would say he looked terrible, whenever the pictures of him out in the heat of summer in long sleeves and jeans would surface. He stopped going. He didn’t want anyone to see him. He had this a-ha moment of understanding, for why Britney Spears shaved her head. He wanted to shave his fucking head so bad. 

Now, he’s here with Derek Hale. Who doesn’t just open the door for himself and barely hold it open for Stiles with a hand behind him – he moves ahead, opens the door, and gestures for Stiles to go on inside. He has no idea, absolutely none, how nice of a gesture that is, but he must get the hint that it’s a nicer gesture than Stiles is used to, because Stiles blushes and ducks his head as he goes inside, like he’s embarrassed by it. 

It’s dark and moody inside, with a real live piano player in the corner and a tinkling fountain in the center of the room. It makes the place feel fresh and airy, lots of greenery and dim lights everywhere. The hostess is friendly and doesn’t balk or doubletake them when she sees them, so she must have been told that they would be here. Some of the other diners do, as they walk down the rows of tables and booths, turning their heads to make sure they’re actually seeing who they think they’re seeing. 

They sit. Stiles immediately feels like he’s an alien wearing a human being’s skin, for all that he knows how to be on a casual date. The last time he was on a date of any kind would’ve been over a year ago. It would’ve been with Matt. It would’ve been completely silent, them not making eye contact, Matt being rude to the server, complaining about his food, on and on. Stiles got used to being quiet out of desperation to not wind up in a fight or getting hit in the face, and being in a restaurant like this immediately ignites that fear response in him again, even as he tries to squash it down. 

Derek immediately starts talking the second they’re seated. He says, “do you like this place?”

Stiles fiddles with his collar, shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “It’s cool,” he says, looking around, just so he won’t have to meet Derek’s eyes. He’s out of his element, out of his fucking element. “Lots of, ah, plants.” 

“They grow their own herbs,” he says. He’s smiling again. That smile he doles out whenever Stiles is acting bizarrely. “You want champagne?” 

“Oh, I’m champagned out, trust me.” Derek was not the only person who took note of the fact that Stiles was shitfaced wasted on Jimmy Fallon – not by a long shot. A ninety year old woman in a rest home with dementia watching it with the sound off would’ve been able to tell that Stiles was trashed. It’s all anyone has talked about since it happened.

How Stiles fumbled over the words to this great breakup song he wrote about his piece of shit ex-boyfriend, how that must mean he’s still destroyed over the ending of the relationship, how he’s been in a complete downward spiral since it ended, how he desperately wants to get back together with Matt. It’s been vomit-inducing, at best. Stiles will never drink champagne again, as long as he lives. 

“Water it is, then,” Derek smiles at him, all teeth, his movie-star smile, and Stiles has to take in a deep breath and try to compose himself. He used to be able to successfully be charming and likable, used to be able to hold a conversation and flirt and make jokes. Now, he’s hanging on by a thread, and everyone knows it, and everyone is staring at him, and Derek is so put together and good looking, that Stiles feels…shaky. On uneven ground. 

No one ever talks about this part. People only ever want to hear about the abuse. No one ever wants to hear about what it’s like to have to go back out into the world after it’s all done, and pretend like none of that ever happened. Stiles had to relearn how to exist, when he was with Matt. He had to learn how to be quiet and how to sit and when to speak and how to speak and where to look, and now he has to unlearn all of that, or he has to at least try. 

The waitress comes and gives them waters, so Stiles is thankful to have something to do with his hands. He reaches out and chugs it as soon as she sets it down, so she smiles at him and says she’ll bring a carafe for them. Derek thanks her, and then sets his eyes on Stiles. “You’re nervous.”

“You’re perceptive,” he says, after swallowing a big gulp of his water. “I don’t really – it’s been a long time since I’ve been out. With someone. Or out at all, actually. I’m sort of undesirable, anymore, so I feel a bit…”

Derek makes a face at him across the table. “You’re one of the most famous musicians in the world. What about that makes you undesirable?”

Stiles doesn’t know. He stopped thinking of himself as famous, or big, or even a musician, at least a good one. He stopped thinking of himself as fuckable or unattainable or any of that sort of stuff. But then it makes him whiny to say things like that, whiny being the main buzzword people use to describe him, and being whiny makes him insufferable, so he doesn’t know what to say to that. 

“What’s good here?” He asks, desperate for a segue out of talking about himself. He’s sick to death of talking about himself, anymore. He picks up his menu and stares at the contents like it’s in a different language, while across the table, Derek is eyeballing him pretty intensely. 

He strikes Stiles as being incredibly in tune to people’s body language. He is reading Stiles right now, like an open book. “We’re just friends, remember?”

Stiles looks up at him. Derek is smiling at him earnestly, holding his hands out like this is all no big deal, because it’s not a date, not really, they’re just friends. “Right,” he agrees. He reaches for his water glass again and takes another big sip, swallows it, takes in a deep breath. Right. Friends. He’s overthinking this entire thing. “Sorry, I’m just…maybe let’s start over.”

“Okay.”

“Wow, there’s lots of plants in here,” he says, as though they’ve just sat down again and the evening is beginning over. Derek nods his head and looks around, as though he hadn’t noticed it before. 

“Yes, I heard they grow their own herbs,” he taps his chin in mock thought.

“How fancy,” Stiles says, tapping his own chin. “I can’t remember the last time I went someplace so nice. I’ve been so busy. When I was writing, I locked myself in my apartment for, like, three months. I had food delivered every day, dude. I should be 1100 pounds.”

Derek laughs.

“You’ve gotta be on some kinda crazy diet,” Stiles points to him, up and down, “I mean, they keep you fit. Like, strict fit.”

“If I were working, sure, I’d be on a diet. I’m actually not working right now.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Stiles holds his hands out, lifting an eyebrow, “I thought I was hanging out with Derek Hale, the movie star. Not Derek Hale, the guy with no job.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” he smirks across the table, “I’m a bum, now. And, the steak.”

“What?”

“You asked what was good here. The steak is good. I know you like red meat.”

Stiles puts his menu down. He levels Derek with a very serious stare, folding his arms on top of the table. “Why do I get the sense, and why have I many times gotten the sense, that you know a lot about me?”

He goes for nonchalance, sipping his water, shrugging his shoulders. “My sister has had her bedroom walls covered in posters of you since your debut. I know a handful of things.” 

“A handful of things.”

“Some trivia.”

“Like…?”

Derek puts his glass down and leans back in his seat. “You hate sushi.”

“True,” he agrees, motioning with his hand for more. 

“You started playing guitar when you were like, four or something.” 

“Five,” he corrects, tapping his fingers on the table. “This really is trivia, holy shit.”

“It’s just random shit I’ve picked up on over the years of her obsessively watching your interviews and performances,” he waves his hand as though it’s not a big deal. “Nothing of any real substance.” 

The waitress comes just then, pen poised and ready to take their order. Stiles sits up straight and watches Derek make eye contact with her, smile, point to exactly what he wants on the menu with a please and a thank you. Honestly, in the few times Stiles has ever imagined what Derek Hale would be like, polite didn’t really rank high on his list of personality traits. But there he is, being polite to the wait staff, in a way that suggests politeness and respect for servers was drilled into him as a child. 

She looks at Stiles expectantly, and then he remembers he has to order something. She’s waiting for him to order something. He had been so caught up staring at Derek being nice that he forgot about ordering something.

“Oh, uh,” he clears his throat. “The…steak.” 

“The steak,” she repeats, and she smiles at him. “How do you want that cooked?”

“Um.” His brain goes blank. Matt used to always order for him. He forgot how he actually likes his meat cooked. “Regular. Or – that’s not a word for meat, holy shit. Medium, how about.”

She laughs and nods her head. “You want anything aside from water?”

Stiles immediately takes this as a dig about him being an alcoholic. He’s almost offended, rearing his neck back at her, but she’s just blinking at him innocently – because, believe it or not, not everyone on the face of the planet has it out for him. It starts to feel like that, sometimes. But she’s just doing her job. “No, thank you, sorry,” he mumbles, and she nods her head at him again, that entire range of insane thought that Stiles just had went completely over her head. 

Once she’s gone with their menus in her hands, Stiles and Derek are looking at one another again. Derek is doing that perceptive staring thing, and Stiles has to look away, down at his hands on the table. “You are nice,” Stiles says, maybe just to break the silence. 

“Were you expecting me to be mean?” 

“Sort of,” he laughs, then shrugs his shoulders. It’s not just about how people say Derek is a megalomaniacal jerkoff who fights people and yells at PA’s on set, because frankly, Stiles is starting to suspect more and more that that’s all a load of hogwash anyway. 

It’s because he’s used to someone being mean to him. But he can’t say that, because that’s a sad sack thing to say, and he’s trying not to do that anymore. 

“I just mean, you treat the waitress like a person. For a big deal person like you, that’s – you know.” 

“I think treating the waitress like a person is a low bar to set for niceness, but sure,” he smiles thinly. “Can I ask you something?”

“Oh, boy,” Stiles looks at his hands, again. 

“Feel free not to answer it if you don’t want to.” He hesitates for a second, which is rare for Derek – he seems to say exactly what he wants to say when he wants to say it, no holding back. Now, he pauses and runs his finger along the rim of his water glass for a second. Stiles cannot imagine what he’s about to say. “I know people ask you dozens of questions you don’t want to answer a day. But I just gotta ask.”

Stiles twiddles his fingers together, pulling his hands into his lap under the table. 

“…what is your favorite Derek Hale movie?”

Stiles can’t help it – he bursts out laughing. He laughs and then slaps his hand over his mouth to stifle it down, because this is a nice restaurant and people aren’t supposed to laugh so hard they snort, here. Derek grins at him, seeming pleased at having lightened the mood. “How many times do I have to tell you, I’ve never seen one.”

“You insult me.”

“Well, apparently, you’re not even a real working actor.” 

“You’re going to sit and watch Dead By Sunrise, and you’re going to like it.”

“Only if you take your shirt off in it.”

“Oh, the shirt comes off,” he guffaws, like of fucking course it does. “They wouldn’t let me on set if I didn’t promise to take my shirt off for at least fifteen minutes of screen time.” 

Stiles laughs and stifles it again, imagining that there’s an entire clause in Derek Hale’s movie contracts about taking his shirt off. There definitely is. And hey, why not? He works very hard to look like that, most likely, so why not show it off? “It’s the opposite for me. I have to promise to keep my shirt _on_.” 

“You know I know that’s not true,” he leans over the table a bit, like they’re in on a secret together, so Stiles leans in, too. “Like I said, my sister has had posters of you up on her wall for years. I’ve seen the beach photoshoot.” 

Oh, yes, that one. That was another Rolling Stone article, where they pushed Stiles into the ocean and had him roll around so his white shirt went translucent and you could see his nipples and then took his picture. Honestly, he had forgotten about it, but the mention of it has him blushing and looking away. “I’m sure you’ve spent countless hours staring at those pictures.”

Derek leans back. He rests his hands on the table and shrugs, casual as all get out. “I told you I think you’re the best looking person I’ve ever seen, I meant it.”

Nervously, Stiles fiddles with his collar again. He doesn’t know what to say to that. His face feels hot. He imagines that Derek has, actually, spent at least some time staring at those pictures of Stiles rolling around on the beach. It’s embarrassing, at the same time that it makes an unfamiliar thrill go up his spine, to think of Derek seeing those pictures and not being disgusted by them. 

“I thought we were just being friends,” Stiles says, clearing his throat and daring to meet Derek’s eyes across the table. 

“Friends,” Derek agrees, and then tacks on, “who have sex.”

“I thought your sister said you weren’t allowed to –“

“She’s concerned that I’m going to be fodder for the next album in a bad way,” he shakes his head and smiles, again, “like I’m going to do something bad to you.”

Stiles is used to people doing bad things to him. He’s used to record executives having him sign contracts with fine print, he’s used to people using him to get what they want, he’s used to people talking down to him and hitting him and forcing him to do things he doesn’t want to do, and he’s used to people treating him like garbage. “Well, are you?” 

“No,” he says. “I’m not.” 

Stiles really can’t trust that, or believe it. There’s no reason that he would, or that he should. He barely knows Derek. Not to mention, he has a whole host of legitimate reasons to never trust anyone ever again – but again, they’re not dating. Derek is going to take him back to his apartment and they’ll have sex, and maybe they’ll have sex a few more times after that, but then Stiles is on tour. The second leg hasn’t been announced yet, but there will be one, and he’ll be gone around the world all summer long, and hell, he may not even come back from this fucking tour. 

He doesn’t necessarily need to believe that Derek has no intentions of doing anything to him. It doesn’t matter, because Stiles has no intentions of giving Derek the opportunity, either way. 

By the time they’re leaving the restaurant, word had already spread that they were there. There’s a handful of photographers outside waiting, and the second Derek opens the door for Stiles, there’s _flash flash flash_ across both of their faces. Derek leads the way with Stiles close behind. The clicks of the cameras are hard to ignore, and Stiles remembers a time when that sound would ignite a fight or flight instinct in him so deeply that he’d think he’d hear it, when he was alone in his apartment at night, trying to sleep. 

Now, he focuses on Derek’s back and ignores it. 

Derek’s place is the same as he remembers it from last time – cozy and warm, dark muted colors, the smell of Derek’s cologne covering every last inch of the place. They stand in the living room for a minute or two, Stiles with his hands in his pockets, Derek hovering only a few feet away. Derek says, “you want some coffee?” 

Stiles shakes his head. “No.”

“You want a beer?”

“No.”

“You want me to keep asking you things, or you want to go to my room?”

Stiles sucks in a deep breath through his nose and thinks that he hasn’t let someone touch him like this in so long. So, so long. “Your room, I think.”

“Okay,” he nods, and then he moves forward. He puts his hand on the small of Stiles’ back, an oddly intimate gesture for all that it’s casual and done seemingly without Derek barely thinking about it, and starts guiding him off toward the hallway. It’s short, just a couple of doors, and Derek goes for the one on the left, gently pushing Stiles in ahead of him. 

At first, Stiles just sees Derek’s huge bed all black and ominous in the darkness, and then the light switch gets flipped. Stiles turns, and then stops dead in his tracks at what he sees on the wall directly across from the bed. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

“It’s not a sex thing,” Derek immediately says, hands going up in surrender. “It was a coincidence.” 

“It’s a sex thing,” Stiles argues, shaking his head as he takes in the full sight of the object in question. 

It’s a mirror. A full, floor to ceiling, almost as wide as the wall itself, mirror. Huge. Stiles has only seen mirrors this big in, like, clubs. Or raunchy porn movies. Never in person. He stands there staring at himself for a second, then at Derek looking remarkably embarrassed behind him, and then he checks to see how much of the bed you can see in the mirror.

Pretty much all of it. 

“The girl I decorated this apartment with got it because it’s luxurious to have a mirror that big. We didn’t even think about it, I swear.”

Stiles shakes his head and laughs, this incredulous, disbelieving laugh. “I didn’t realize I was in the Playboy Bunny mansion.” 

“Oh, Christ,” Derek rubs at his forehead. “I can put a sheet over it if it freaks you out. I’ve had to do it before, trust me.”

“You’ve – you’ve had to put sheets over it?” Stiles is laughing harder, bent over, hands on his knees. 

“There’s nowhere else to put it but in here, and it just so happens to be next to the bed. It’s not a weird pervert thing.”

Stiles is still laughing, taking in the sight of it some more. It’s clownish, the size of this fucking mirror. 

“Please say you don’t think I’m a gross pervert.”

“Okay,” Stiles wipes some tears out of the corners of his eyes and straightens up, before taking a deep breath in and out. “I don’t think you’re a gross pervert. The mirror is…it’s fine. Distracting, but fine.” 

“I can’t even get it out of here,” he gestures to it like he’s mad at it, “it’s permanently here unless I get workmen in to take it apart and move it out piece by piece.”

“Okay, see, I can believe that you didn’t intend for it to be a sex thing. But I don’t believe that you get no pleasure out of having it there now that you realize it _is_ a sex thing.”

Derek is quiet for a second. His face is blank, impassive – but it’s not a denial. Stiles gets it. If he looked like Derek, he’d probably want to watch himself fuck people, too. It’s a gross egotistical thing, but hey. It’s Derek Hale. What does anyone expect? “Fine. It’s…fine.” 

Fine, right. 

“Well,” Stiles puts his hands on his hips and looks around at Derek’s bedroom – it’s not much to see. A huge bed, the giant mirror, a door that probably leads to his closet, his bedside table with a small stack of books and a pair of reading glasses. There’s some more pictures on the wall, but nothing too terribly interesting. “You got me in your room.” 

Derek nods his head. “You still want to?”

“Yes,” Stiles nods right back at him, resolute. “Yes, it’s time for me to…get back on the horse.”

“The horse,” Derek repeats. He’s doing that thing again, where he moves closer and closer, inch by inch, second by second. 

“And I think I know just the stallion.”

“Yikes,” Derek scrunches his face up – he’s an inch away, now, maybe two. “You’re a fucking nerd. That doesn’t come across at all in your image, but you are one.” 

Derek makes no moves on him. He doesn’t try to kiss him, or touch him, or anything. He seems to be waiting for Stiles to do something, and Stiles is nervous and hasn’t been in charge of anything in a very long time. He rubs his sweaty hands down the front of his jeans, so Derek won’t have to be touched by a clam, and then he reaches them out. He puts them on Derek’s chest, gentle. Derek just stands there and lets it happen. 

“I know you were probably expecting, um, Stiles Stilinski, sex god, or something. But I’m…”

“That’s fine,” he shrugs. “I’d fuck you no matter what.”

“Oh,” Stiles breathes out, all high pitched. The idea that Derek would be attracted to Stiles even if he were the world’s biggest fucking spazz is nice, but a crazy thought to him all the same. He bites the bullet, leaning up to kiss Derek on the mouth. 

Like the first time they kissed, it’s easy and slow. Almost gentle, in a way, because Derek does not push it to get any farther than the way that Stiles is doing it. Stiles wraps his arms around Derek’s neck and they kiss, in the silence – nothing but cars and sirens down below, and the sound of their mouths moving together. 

Stiles waits for Derek to start taking Stiles’ clothes off or touching him or pulling him closer, but he doesn’t. He is taking all of his cues from Stiles, and Stiles alone. And no one has let Stiles take the lead in…a very long time. Stiles nearly doesn’t know what to do with himself. 

He pulls Derek back, towards the bed, and then he sits down on the edge of it. He swallows, nervous, and looks up to meet Derek’s eyes. “You’re being nice again,” he accuses, and Derek shrugs, but has nothing to say back to that. He leans down and kisses Stiles some more, before Stiles pushes him back and away, gently.

Without giving himself any time to hesitate, he reaches back and pulls his shirt up and over his head. He tosses it aside, and he has to physically fight the urge to cross his arms over his chest to hide his body. Derek said he likes the way Stiles looks, many times at this point. Derek follows Stiles’ lead and unbuttons his own shirt, button by button, before shrugging out of it and letting it drop to the floor. 

“There it is,” Stiles says, “the moneymaker.” 

“Ha ha.”

“It’s um…I mean…” Stiles shrugs. “It’s all right.” 

“I don’t go to the gym six days a week for Stiles Stilinski to tell me it’s _all right_.”

“It’s nice,” he corrects, smiling in spite of himself. “It’s like looking at an ad for something European.” 

There’s this split second, where Derek leans down and takes Stiles by his arms to pull him closer, to kiss him, to start moving faster – that the grip he uses is just a little too firm, that he’s covering Stiles’ body with his own almost completely and it’s too much, and Stiles gets this immediate, all encompassing fear that there’s someone else touching him. 

He jerks away on instinct, sucking in a deep breath and sprawling back across the bed. Derek is shocked, blinking and putting his hands up, to show he means no harm. “Whoa,” he says, and Stiles blinks right back at him.

He looks in the mirror. That’s Derek standing there, he notices, not…someone else. That was Derek touching him, and Derek has done nothing to suggest he’d want to physically harm Stiles. Stiles looks at himself, and he doesn’t see bruises, just his own pale skin. With a deep breath, he runs his hand down his face and tries to shake the nerves off. It’s fine. No one is going to hurt him. It’s fine. 

“Are you all right?” Derek asks him, voice steady. “You want to stop?”

“No, I just –“ he doesn’t know what to say, or how to explain it. He shakes his head more emphatically, and slowly starts moving back up the bed, closer to where Derek is. “No. Been a while, is all. It’s fine. I’m just not used to being touched like that.” 

Derek seems hesitant. He looks Stiles up and down, searching his body for any sign of reluctance – but Stiles isn’t reluctant. He wants to have sex. He wants the freedom to fuck Derek Hale, and he will not let Matt take even this away from him. 

Matt took a lot. He took most of Stiles’ life. He can’t have this. 

“I want you,” Stiles says, because he knows Derek is not a scumbag and he won’t have sex with him unless he knows that there’s no doubt in Stiles’ mind. “You’re the Dead By Sunrise guy. I know your dick is big.”

Derek smiles, his body relaxing. He’s more gentle, this time, when he leans down to climb over on top of Stiles’ body. “It is,” he promises, and his body is totally covering Stiles’. He pushes his hips in between Stiles’ legs, and kisses him on the mouth, as he rubs the bulge in his pants over a similar one in Stiles’.

“That is big,” Stiles agrees, breathy, and Derek grins at him. “I bet you don’t get tired of hearing that.”

“Not really,” he says. He thrusts again, friction, heat pooling in Stiles’ stomach, Stiles’ breath catching in his throat. It feels good, like close his eyes and moan good, but he keeps his eyes open. If he closes them, he’s afraid he’ll forget where he is, who he’s with, and that’s dangerous – his mind is a trauma-riddled nightmare, and he can’t go there. He looks Derek right in the eyes, so when he does moan, it’s right to his face. 

Derek seems to like that. He leans down and kisses Stiles on the neck, by his ear, panting breaths right against the side of his face. “You are so fucking attractive,” he says this like it’s an accusation, and Stiles laughs. A laugh is not the response Derek wanted, so he pulls out of Stiles’ neck and looks him in the face again. “I’m serious. You’re my type, exactly.”

“Damaged twink,” Stiles repeats what he had said to Scott that day at rehearsals, expecting to get a laugh out of him, but Derek just blinks and cocks his head to the side.

“No,” he says, serious as a heart attack. “That is not what I think of you.”

“Well,” he clears his throat. Their erections are still touching through the layers of their clothes, but they’re really going to have this conversation. “What is it then? That you like about me?”

“You really want me to answer that right now?”

“Kinda, yeah,” he jerks his hips up, so it feels good again, and Derek blinks and grunts a bit, meeting Stiles’ eyes head on. 

“You’re good looking, and you know that,” he accuses, with a light laugh.

But Stiles blinks up at him and then shakes his head, once. “Maybe not,” is all he says, so Derek stops smiling, sobers up a little bit. He traces Stiles’ face with his eyes a few times, silent, and Stiles stares back. 

“Your eyes,” Derek begins with. “Your mouth. You have a really nice profile.”

“All right, I get it,” Stiles looks away, but then he’s just meeting his own eyes in the mirror, seeing Derek hovering over him, and has to look back to Derek’s face again. “You’re being nice.”

“I’m not just being nice. I want to fuck you.” 

Stiles laughs. He reaches his hand up and covers his mouth, but then Derek catches his wrist and pulls it away, so then there’s nowhere to hide. The desire to hide has been so strong, these past several years, it feels like he’s always been hiding, his entire life, even though there must have been a time before all that where he was…normal. He can’t remember what it was like to feel normal, anymore. 

Derek kisses him again. This feels less and less like two fuck buddies having a wild romp in the sack with every passing second, and more and more like something else entirely. Stiles doesn’t know what to do about that, so he just lets it happen. They kiss, and Derek moves his hips again so Stiles gasps into his mouth, and it’s…different. 

Than the kind of sex Stiles has had in the past. Just different. 

Stiles reaches down and undoes his jeans, his fingers fumbling as he does so. Derek leans back, up on his knees, towering over Stiles, so Stiles’ hands have room to work. Derek watches him, so Stiles nervously fumbles a bit more, trying to unzip and shimmy his pants down off his hips. “I feel ridiculous,” he says, finally, and Derek smirks. 

He uses his own hands to help Stiles pull his pants and underwear down, all the way down, off his legs and off his ankles. Without wasting another second, because Stiles wants to hurry up and fucking do it already, he grabs at Derek’s belt and pulls, undoing the strap, going in for the buckle. 

Derek helps him again, until both of them are there on the bed, totally naked. Stiles hasn’t been totally naked with someone else in…

“How do you want to…?” Derek starts, and Stiles goes red around the face. 

“I want to see your face,” he says, avoiding eye contact, feeling humiliated for some reason. “I’ve gotta…I just want to see you.”

There’s that perceptive stare of Derek’s again, but he doesn’t make a comment. He juts his head in the direction of the mirror. “That’s where that thing comes in handy, huh?”

“Oh, yeah,” he agrees. He sits up a bit, pushing himself up onto his hands, so he and Derek are at eye level, and they’re staring at each other again. Derek reaches over to his bedside table and opens up the small drawer, rifling around before he comes up with a condom and some lube, showing both of these things to Stiles as though he’s waiting for Stiles to back out, or something. 

Stiles doesn’t. He nods his head, turning his body so he can get onto his hands and knees, while Derek watches his every move like a hawk. Once he’s situated, he dares to look in the mirror – there’s him, and he looks away from himself immediately, and then there’s Derek, looking right back at him. 

“This is bizarre,” Stiles says, watching and feeling Derek put a hand on his lower back. “I feel like I’m watching porn.” 

“Well, that’s not so bad,” Derek smiles at him, benign and genuine, and Stiles sort of really likes him, in this moment. He thinks about how Derek said when they first met that he was sure that Stiles would like him, and he wonders how it is that Derek could possibly know what Stiles would or would not like. 

Then, he remembers. Derek has apparently had Stiles lurking in his periphery thanks to his sister, for years, and years. Who knows what else Derek has read about him or heard Stiles say in an interview? 

Derek slides a wet finger in and Stiles spreads his legs more, biting his lip and avoiding his own eyes in the mirror. He focuses on watching Derek work, instead. Derek moves his finger in and out, then adds a second one, looks at Stiles’ face in the mirror to check if he’s all right, puts his hand on Stiles’ back and rubs slow, smooth circles, and his eyes are dark. His erection is full, heavy. He’s turned on. Stiles is, too, but not like Derek is. Derek is serious. 

He had meant it, when he said he wants to fuck Stiles. Not just to have some weird kind of power over him, but because he just wants to, organically, honestly. 

“I’m ready,” Stiles tells him, clearing his throat. “I’m good, I want it.”

Derek pulls his fingers out. Stiles watches as he slides the condom on, and then slicks that up too for good measure. He watches as Derek lines himself up, taking Stiles by the hips, holding him there, solid and steady. They meet eyes in the mirror, again. “God, this is weird,” Stiles says, and Derek smirks. 

“I cannot believe I’m fucking you,” he says, in this real awestruck tone – it reminds him of the way sometimes fans walk into meet and greets and just stare at him, like they’re only just then becoming aware that Stiles is actually a person, and not just a voice in a machine. “You’re the greatest living artist, after all.”

Stiles laughs. He shakes with laughter, and Derek smiles, because he seems to really like it when he makes Stiles laugh. “Fuck off, with that.” 

“You ready?”

“Yes,” Stiles says. He makes sure to stare, to watch, as Derek holds his dick steady, gently pushes the head in. He sees it when Derek’s face shifts; when it goes from smirking and joking around to serious, to intense, as he bottoms out inside of Stiles’ body. He holds still for just a second, looking at Stiles’ face in the mirror. 

“You okay?”

“Yes,” he repeats, bearing down onto his hands a little more. “Just – fuck me, for real. Like how you imagined when you saw the Rolling Stone beach photoshoot.” 

“You know, I’ve imagined fucking you more times than just that,” he promises, and that blows Stiles’ mind. Derek is weirdly honest. Probably because he’s such a big celebrity, he has no reason to lie – everyone would tell him he’s great even if he admitted that he likes eating human flesh, even if everyone knew he had this fucking mirror in his bedroom. “You want it like that?”

“Like what?”

“You want me to be rough.”

“Oh,” Stiles blinks, and he looks at Derek in the mirror again. He used to like it rough a whole lot, but that was before … “Not rough. Yet. Um. Maybe just…”

Derek moves a bit. He likely can’t help it, being buried inside of Stiles’ body and not being able to move, but it makes Stiles shudder and he goes quiet, so Derek quickly apologizes. “Just…?”

“…just move,” he finally commands, and Derek does, not needing to be asked twice. He pulls out, then in again, then out, and Stiles breathes and stares. He keeps his eyes on Derek the entire time, refusing to look at himself and refusing to let his mind wander. 

It feels good. Derek grips his hips, but not too hard, and he doesn’t shove Stiles’ face down into the bed roughly, or manhandle him into a different position, or treat him like he’s just an object to fuck his own orgasm out into. He runs a hand up Stiles’ back, then down, murmurs something that Stiles can’t understand, and he’s fucking, yes, but it’s not…harsh. It feels good, it feels really good. Stiles had honestly forgotten sex could be good. 

There’s not a second, not even a millisecond, where Stiles could possibly forget that it’s Derek who’s touching him. Sex with Matt never felt like this. To be fair, Stiles demanded to be roughed up a bit during sex at the start, but thinking back on it, Matt enjoyed treating him like shit in bed a little too much, and that should’ve been a red fucking flag, but Stiles digresses. 

The point is, Derek is different. He’s all quiet grunts and heavy breathing, stroking Stiles’ back, being…nice, again. It’s weird to think about the huge guy plowing Stiles hard enough his body shakes as nice, but he is being nice. 

Derek comes, holding onto Stiles’ body tight and whimpering a bit. He folds over Stiles for a moment, panting, squeezing his eyes shut. Then, he tugs himself out of Stiles and makes quick work of disposing of the condom – Stiles moves like he’s going to roll himself off of the bed, sort of used to no one caring if he got off or not, but Derek grabs him. 

“C’mere,” he says, voice low, as he pulls Stiles against his chest. Stiles goes with it, startled into a laugh, before Derek kisses him. It is not the gentle kissing from before, where he was letting Stiles take the lead – not at all. This is a hungry, deep kiss, all tongue and teeth and lip biting, and Stiles is still hard as a rock, still turned on as all hell, so he’s into it. 

Before Stiles truly knows what’s going on or what’s happening, he finds himself laying back on the pillows – there are a lot of them on this bed, actually. Throw pillows, for the most part, that some maid most come in and arrange for Derek every morning after he leaves it in a complete fucking mess. He’s in a sea of pillows, on his back, blinking up at the ceiling, and then there’s hot breath on his balls.

Stiles is stunned, for a second. He goes still, staring at jet black hair and Derek’s tan skin. When Derek takes Stiles into his mouth, Stiles squeaks and goes stiff, body tightening around the pleasure. “Holy fuck –“ he whines to the ceiling, in pure disbelief. He can’t remember the last time someone’s mouth was on his dick. His brain short circuits, the pleasure is so immediate and so fucking good. “Ah, holy shit, I’m –“

The worst part is, Derek knows what he’s doing. This is not some hack job. He knows his way around, let’s put it that way. He knows just how to lick the right spot so Stiles goes cross eyed and curls his toes, and he knows how to take it all the way in, down to the back of his throat, and he knows how to cup the balls, how to flick his tongue against them so Stiles keens and grips the sheets. 

“I’m gonna come,” Stiles warns him, shuddering. “Derek, seriously, I’m coming, oh my God, oh my God –“ he comes right down Derek’s throat, and is momentarily horrified by this development. He bursts into apologies, crawling as high up onto the pillows as he can to get away from Derek’s mouth, but Derek stops him.

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and smiles, all teeth, that wolf grin that smacks of self-satisfaction and cockiness. “It’s okay,” he says, earnestly. “You can come in my mouth, I don’t mind.”

Stiles stares at him. “Okay,” he agrees, voice small. That was the best orgasm he’s had in a very fucking long time, and he can’t process it right now, so he just lies there in the pillows, blinking at Derek. Derek moves and flops over right next to Stiles, so their shoulders are touching, and then neither of them say anything, for what feels like a long time. The bedroom is silent, the apartment silent, but the street down below is loud. Cars going by, sirens, people talking. 

“What are you thinking?” Derek asks him, and Stiles doesn’t know how to answer that. 

The truth might just be the best way to go. “I’m thinking I haven’t had sex that good in a while.” 

“Me, either.”

“Oh, right. The movie star with the full size mirror in his bedroom hasn’t had good sex in a while,” Stiles rolls his eyes and then fixes them on Derek, with a disbelieving set to his mouth. 

“I’ve had plenty of good sex. Not sex like that,” he says, and Stiles feels like he’s just being nice, again. For Christ’s sake, Stiles is as good as a spooked animal, when it comes to touching and being around other people – nervously avoiding eye contact and awkwardly insisting on certain positions, pulling away because Derek touched him the wrong way. That is not exactly pornhub material. Or, it is, but from the weird fucked up side of the site. 

Stiles sits up, abrupt. So then, Derek sits up, too. They stare at each other. 

Stiles says, “maybe you want to do that again, sometime.” 

“I do, very much,” he agrees. 

“Okay. But we’re still…friends.”

“Yeah, of course,” Derek says, looking away and nodding, turning so he can put his feet down on the ground and start pawing for his clothes. He comes up with Stiles’ t-shirt and hands it to him. “Friends.”

“And you’re not going to beat down my door all drunk and demand that I call you my boyfriend or you’ll kill yourself.”

Derek laughs, because he thinks that’s a joke. When Stiles doesn’t laugh, just fixes him with a very serious stare, Derek sobers up a bit. He gives Stiles a look and says, “seriously?”

“Seriously. That happened.” 

“I will not do that, holy shit,” he shakes his head like he’s mad about something, tugging his pants up his legs. “Who did that to you?”

Stiles pulls his knees up, rests his arms on them, and looks at himself in the mirror, but he doesn’t feel obliged to answer that question. Derek likely already knows precisely who it was, anyway, because he doesn’t press the issue anymore.

**

Stiles swipes through the pictures of him and Derek Hale leaving the fancy restaurant and leans his chin in his palm, biting his lip and cocking his head to the side as he studiously examines them. The way that they look standing next to each other. Derek looks clean, bright eyed, healthy, serious, intense, like a real celebrity. His clothes are expensive and he smirks at the camera like he’s letting everyone know that, yes, he’s hitting that, thank you very much, and Stiles runs a finger over his mouth to keep himself from smiling.

Stiles, by contrast, looks thin. He looks tired. He looks miserable, like he always does, and then he doesn’t get what Derek wanted to fuck him for in the first place. Stiles is wearing old jeans and a t-shirt, dirty old converse, which, yes, is how he’s always dressed, but seeing it right next to Derek’s perfectly pressed and curated clothes makes him feel…ridiculous. 

He should probably hire a different stylist. 

People seem to like the idea of them together. He doesn’t read much of the comments, because that’s a death wish, but he skims the headlines of articles and the main punchlines. As he’s zooming in on Derek’s face in a particular picture, he gets a text notification from Lydia.

It says – _Pitchfork review is in_. There’s a link attachment. 

She’s been sending him reviews for a solid week, now, since the album came out. She’s been sending him projected sales and streaming numbers and all this other nonsense that he barely cares about anymore. She’s sent him screencaps of highlighted portions of reviews where he gets called a genius, and even more pointedly passive aggressive highlights of people going bananas for Nashville. He’s mostly ignored it. 

However, for whatever reason, people have in recent years started taking the Pitchfork reviews seriously. Stiles has never gotten any higher than a 7.5 before, and honestly, that’s pretty good as far as he’s concerned. It’s not like Pitchfork sets the tone or anything, because he’s already got a 90 metacritic score for this album according to Lydia, but people give a shit about it, let’s put it that way. A bad review leaves people demanding that the basement they’re running the operation out of be flooded, and a good one has people who previously weren’t planning on listening to an album change their minds. 

In testament to that, even though Stiles has ignored relatively every other link or clip she’s sent to him, he stops in his tracks when he sees that notification. He taps his fingers on his knee and looks up, out his living room window, the view he loves, and hesitates. He rubs the back of his neck and sighs. 

He’s read enough to know that people either think he’s a whiny idiot or they think he really did something, this time. They could say anything about it, really, and what does it ultimately matter? It doesn’t matter, he tells himself, but he’s still opening the text and clicking the link all the same. It loads, and he taps his foot, his leg rattling, again and again, as he watches it slowly come up.

There it is. The album cover, his name, the album title, and then a big circle with a 90.0 in the middle of it. Stiles stares at that for a long time. He reloads the page to make sure he’s seeing the right thing, and then there it is again. Stiles Stilinski, 90.0. 

_Stiles Stilinski’s fifth studio effort is his most realized work to date; an obsessive, layered, meticulous deep dive into hurts big and small._

Stiles takes in a breath, and he puts his phone to the side. He doesn’t want to read it anymore. 

He was too afraid to do much of anything when he first broke up with Matt. He kept thinking the guy was going to break in, get past security, find him, go through his friends, do any number of truly terrible things in order to finish what he started that night. Stiles was petrified, and spent most of his time locked away having nightmares, not eating, not doing much of anything. 

Matt never showed. If he ever did try to come back, security stopped him, and didn’t mention it. When he first sat down to start making the album, when he first managed to crawl out of his self-made misery pile in Nashville, he started at his piano. He wrote Nashville, first. It was eight minutes long, mostly him banging on the keys and recording himself from one in the morning until it’d be light outside, fumbling half drunk through most of it. He finished the song, or the first draft of it, and knew he was going to write an entire body of work about it. 

He sold the Nashville place and left it, went directly to New York, locked himself in his apartment, and wrote the record. He wasn’t thinking of it necessarily _as_ a record, but was thinking of it as…therapy. He’d wake up in the middle of the night and remember when the bathroom mirror got broken, from being slammed into it hard enough glass got dug into his arm, and he’d be up for the rest of the night, angrily writing and breaking strings on his guitar. Months, and months, of just writing. 

Then he called Nate and said he had stuff, lots of stuff, he needs to make the stuff right now. They met and sat in the studio, and what’s cool about most producers is they don’t read the writing and ask any fucking questions about what the song is regarding. All Nate cared about was how to make the songs sound how Stiles wanted them to, how to whittle Nashville down from a diatribe into an actual piece of music, how to fine tune the writing into something better, into something good. 

He had been through something, and now he was working it out. He spent hours in the studio obsessing over melodies, bringing in people who could play the mandolin, the violin, going to an entire orchestra and getting them on a track. The entire time he never thought about marketing it, or selling it, or doing anything with it other than getting it out of him. He was just trying to get it out. On the operating table. For him to look at and pick apart so that he could figure out a way to heal himself. 

His big mistake was sending Lydia the demo of Nashville. He had sent it because deadlines were coming up for him, which he had all but forgotten about, and she wanted to know he was working on something. She went nuts over the song, demanded more, all of it, what else is there, and Stiles naively sent it. All of it. 

The next thing he knew, he was in a meeting picking a title and a track list and being told he couldn’t cut Nashville, it was the best song on the record, he couldn’t cut the title track, he couldn’t edit parts out, it was great as it was, it’s coming out in March, tour is planned, get ready, what do you mean you can’t do it, of course you can do it, and guess what? You don’t have a choice. 

The creation of the music itself was the most cathartic experience of Stiles’ life. He hadn’t written anything, not a single thing, since maybe a year into his relationship with Matt. It had felt good, like being himself again, to be in the studio, with likeminded people, making real art. He didn’t think about what was going to sell. What was going to be the first single. Tour. None of it. He had just wanted to feel something, anything. 

Then, they took it away from him and turned it into something else. He doesn’t even actually own that music. Then it’s like he doesn’t even actually own his trauma, his lived experience, anything that happened to him. It’s all for them to gawk at, to revel in, and sometimes Stiles really thinks people like it when he’s miserable. They like to see him like that. 

This is his most universally acclaimed album. This is the kind of thing people work their entire lives for, to have a beloved record that the world has agreed is good, that everyone has heard, that people relate to. Stiles has worked for this. Stiles deserves this. 

But he doesn’t get to really have it. It’s tainted, marred. 

He scrubs his hands down his face and takes another drink from his glass of whiskey, before reaching out to grab the guitar he had left propped up next to him on the couch. He holds it in his hands, and he thinks about what Scott had said, about playing Nashville until it means nothing to him anymore.

He plays the first chord and then lets it ring. Then, he plays it again. It rings. Again, he plays the first chord. And again, and again. He remembers what it had felt like writing this at the piano, how it was like he was himself, he was him, no one was controlling him anymore, no one could tell him what to do, what to say, how to dress, none of it. 

Naively, he thought the strings were cut. Matt may have been gone, but he still had other strings still attached to him. 

He straightens up and shakes his head, and he plays the first chord again. And again. 

It’s one am before he makes it to the chorus. 

In the morning he’s expected at rehearsals, so he’s at rehearsals. They give him coffee and a bagel that he doesn’t touch, and Lydia is there watching his every move like a hawk. She wants to make sure he’s not drunk, or stoned, or something else. Scott comes up to him and animatedly wants to discuss the Pitchfork review, what a big deal it is, how great, how great, how fucking great, and Stiles frowns and he wants to think it’s fucking great. 

He’s tired of giving everything, everything he has away to someone else. 

“Let’s do Nashville,” he says, loud, so everyone stops what they’re doing and blinks at him. Lydia looks at him, and then shares a look with everyone else. Stiles has thrown a tantrum every time Nashville has come up, so they’re wary, unsure of if he’s gearing up to smash his guitar, or what. Instead, he just picks it up and slings it on, walking to his corner, the microphone, the rug under his feet. “Tour is in a month and a half and we haven’t played it, so let’s play it.” 

Lydia clears her throat. “I thought we would do it with you on the piano, like the demo-“

“I don’t want to do it on the piano. I want to do it on the guitar, with the full band.” 

Erica is nervously shifting from foot to foot, likely because she and everyone else in the room expects this to be a big fight of some kind. There have been a dozen of those since they came to this room to start playing the songs from this fucking record, so Stiles can’t rightly blame them – but he knows Lydia isn’t going to fight him on this. She’s getting what she wants. 

Lydia nods. “Fine.”

She had sent him the new setlist a couple of days ago. It’s pretty bad. The entirety of the album is on it, including ones he had explicitly said he wouldn’t play, but that’s to be expected. The title track is even on it, even though it’s arguably the saddest piece of shit on the record – but apparently, it’s a cult favorite, so now Stiles is going to have to sit at the piano and play it like a ghoul. Nashville is, of course, the center of the show, the climax. Then she has him closing with Sea Monster, because everyone likes it when he closes with Sea Monster, and he doesn’t mind that. He likes Sea Monster. 

So does Derek Hale. 

“I figured we’d ah,” he strums, once, twice, “not do a lead in. We’ll just close out Nausea and then maybe do a blackout and I’ll start, and they’ll know what it is,” he goes to his spot and sniffles a bit. He had been up all night, playing it and playing it, practically until his fingers bled. He had given a lot of thought to how to do it, how to make it suck less, but he couldn’t come up with anything. 

Instead he went for the worst possible scenario. He’ll just do it. All the way. People like to see him up there failing, anyway, so he may as well fail upwards. 

“Sounds fine to me,” Lydia has a measured tone, like she half expects Stiles to bring out Ashton Kutcher and announce a punking has taken place. But Stiles just stands there gripping his guitar, his fingers already poised, ready to go. Everyone stands there waiting for him, because the song opens acoustically, so they can’t start until he does. 

He grips his guitar. Plays the first chord and then stops. Lydia rubs at her face and then crosses her arms over her chest, waiting. 

He sucks in a deep breath, and plays the intro. It’s mechanical to him, at this point. He walks in a circle, lets his fingers move without thinking about it too much, and frowns. He doesn’t know how they expect him to get up in front of people and do this every night, but he’s doing it now, and they all just stand there and wait for their cues. 

Lydia is pleased. He sings the opening and she’s pleased. The chorus, and the band, and all the way through, with him staring blankly at the wall, and she’s pleased. He doesn’t know what it is about this song that people like, because he can’t fucking stand it. He cannot fucking stand it.

**

Stiles does press in Europe for two weeks, and he does his best to not be a sack of shit. He gets up on time and shows up on time and allows himself to be put into nice clothes and makeup and he gets his hair cut and they shave his face and then strap a microphone to his shirt and send him onto soundstages where people ask him questions. He tries his level best to not be surly, to not be rude, to not take umbrage, to not fantasize about pulling a Britney every time someone touches his fucking hair.

He comes across distant and melancholy, but he’s not drunk, and he’s not falling over, and he’s not insane. Lydia accepts it and rewards him with things like reservations at fancy restaurants, presidential suites in hotels, allowing him the freedom to go look at stuff in London for an afternoon. His picture gets taken, and at night he lurks his own candids obsessively, staring at himself and making mental notes to fix what needs to be fixed. 

He slouches too much, he needs to stand up straighter. He frowns too much, he needs to make an effort to at least look impassive at worst. It was not important to him to seem put together, before, because he wasn’t; now that tour is looming over his head like a black cloud, now that the people who pay his fucking bills and feed him and keep him in a job are going to be the ones spending money on the experience of seeing him, he needs to be a half a person at least. 

He tries not to be a piece of shit. It’s hard work. It’s pathetic, but it is really, really hard work. 

Derek Hale, 2:34 PM : How’s London?  
Me, 2:36 PM : My home in another life. I’m an ugly American, unfortunately.   
Derek Hale, 2:37 PM : Are we still on for dinner when you get back?

Derek is the master of not giving a shit if it’s obvious he was just looking for an excuse to text. He already knows how London is – he’s asked a half dozen times. He just wanted to subtly poke the reminder, or maybe even just look for a reason to talk to Stiles at all. 

Me, 2:39 PM : Yes. I’ll wear my trousers and my jumper.   
Derek Hale, 2:42 PM : Okay??  
Me, 2:43 PM : That’s London speak, you wouldn’t get it.   
Derek Hale, 2:45 PM : Oh, right. That’s the ugly American in me. I’m looking forward to seeing you. 

Stiles looks up from his phone, and frowns across the restaurant. Scott is with him, shoveling fish and chips into his mouth like his very life depends on it, but Stiles has barely touched his own food. Derek has been nice to him, yes, and they’ve had sex a few times, yes, and they hang out and kiss and all that stuff. Stiles is always sure to remind him they’re just friends, with all the benefits of being more than that without actually being more than that, and Derek will agree and nod his head and say sure, sure. 

Lately, Derek will say things like that. Like a thinly veiled way of saying he misses Stiles, or something, which is insane, because Derek should not be missing him. Stiles is a steaming hot pile of shit on wheels, and Derek is coiffed and perfect, and there could be nothing on earth that Stiles wants less than to be in another relationship. 

It is too soon. Derek knows that. Stiles has made it perfectly clear. Yet here he is, looking for excuses to text, talking about plans that aren’t for another week. Stiles puts his phone face down and eats his fish, leaving the text unanswered. 

He gets rip roaring drunk at a party they throw for him at a bar somewhere – they’re blasting the album and shoving shots at him and Scott has been three sheets to the wind since the afternoon, so naturally, he winds up falling over himself and barely able to stand. Ed Sheeran is there, and he’s super nice and compliments Stiles and says shit about how he likes the record, and all in all is cool and fun to talk to, but also turns out to be a wickedly bad influence. He orders rounds, and rounds, says he’s paying for it all to congratulate Stiles. Shots, beers, shots, whiskey, shots. 

They play flip cup. Stiles plays fucking flip cup with Ed Sheeran. Well into the night. 

It’s a wonder he’s even standing up straight when he gets carried out at three in the morning, cameras flashing across his face. He winds up tripping and falling before he makes it to his car, and the cameras click, click, click, while Boyd hefts him up and shoves him into the car like a fish out of water.

**

… _So how does one fare after having an entire album written about how much of a piece of shit they are go number one in, about, six thousand different countries? Apparently, pretty well. Matt Harding, outfielder for the New York Yankees, plays a perfect game during opening week of baseball season, for one. In spite of having an entire sixteen song record about himself playing on repeat in every shitty hipster bar in the city of New York, in spite of the endless barrage of harassment from the oft-enraged “Stilinskinator” sect of twitter (one user told Matt to choke on his own tongue and die, for example), Harding seems to be doing just fine. He’s seems unfazed, unbothered, too busy to be ruffled._

_Stilinski, meanwhile, was seen falling drunk out of his own car after a party in London thrown in his honor. Go figure._

**

Stiles stares out the window on the plane, gritting his teeth and rubbing at his bloodshot eyes. Of course Matt seems to be doing just fine no matter how many death threats he gets a day – he’s a sociopath. He’s the guy who threatened to kill someone if Stiles ever talked to his ex-boyfriend again, pushed him up against the inside of the car and shouted in his face, and then got out and smiled for the cameras like nothing had even fucking happened immediately afterward.

It isn’t fair that they do things like that. Matt is doing great and Stiles is drunk on Jimmy Fallon and falling over himself in London. That’s not the reality – whether Stiles is falling drunk out of any number of moving vehicles or not, he still has the number one album. He’s still going on a world tour. He’s still the trending topic. 

Then Stiles feels like he’s just giving into the mania by even thinking something like that. Who gives a shit if Stiles is number one or not? Who fucking gives a shit if Matt played a perfect game? He really is more than welcome to choke on his own tongue and die, as far as Stiles is concerned. 

Though, the truth is, Stiles often finds it hard to wish real harm upon the guy. He wishes him failure and bankruptcy, yes, but when it comes to wishing he’d get hurt, die, lose an arm – Stiles can’t do it. It’s not fair. 

He gets back to the states and is met by a fanfare at the airport, in spite of the late hour. There are girls holding glittery signs and waving their copies of The Standing Dead at him, and the dead last thing he wants to do is stop and sign them. He’s exhausted, hungover, and although he had done his best in Europe to be a normal functioning person, the second he got on the plane and flew away from there, all that went right out the fucking window, is still sitting on the tarmac in London.

But, he does stop. He keeps his sunglasses on even though it’s eleven o’clock at night and he’s indoors so they won’t see his eyes, and signs, and signs, and takes pictures, even as Boyd makes frustrated sighing sounds behind him. In the car, he and Boyd sit in the backseat together in dead silence. 

Stiles stares out the window, and Boyd stares at his phone, for a while. 

Then, out of nowhere, “I saw you reading that article on the plane.”

Stiles doesn’t even turn to look at him. He just sinks lower in his seat, sighing through his nose. He doesn’t have very much to say about that. 

“Reading stuff about him doesn’t seem the best idea,” he goes on. When Stiles finally does turn to look at him, Boyd is staring right at him, a grim frown on his face. He generally is pretty grim, serious, silent – it’s rare for him to say much of anything to Stiles, especially recently, especially since that night. Stiles always chalked it up to maybe Boyd being angry with him, for having kept that secret even from him, the person Stiles pays to protect him from just that kind of nonsense. “Are you ever going to tell anyone?”

Stiles blinks. “No one would believe me.” 

“I would back you up,” he says, and he means it, serious as a heart attack. “I heard it. I saw it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he looks out the window again. He’s always known that telling anyone would get him nowhere, nothing. It would get Matt in no trouble, would get Stiles ostracized, would be worse than even living through the abuse itself, because they’d sue him for defamation, for lying, for slander, and Stiles would wind up paying.

Paying him. His abuser. Paying him fucking money. Stiles would rather do this tour for the rest of his fucking life than do that. 

“You’re just never gonna tell anybody.” He says this, like it is somehow a betrayal. Maybe he means that Stiles is betraying himself. 

“I did tell them,” he says. He’s referring to the record. “In my way.” 

“You know, if you had said something to me –“

“It doesn’t matter,” he repeats, but Boyd keeps talking.

“The guy makes thirty million dollars a year and that doesn’t bother you? He’s just out there every day after what he did to you, and that doesn’t bother you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says with finality, and Boyd looks angry about it. He looks so fucking angry about it, just like how Scott looks at him sometimes. They sit in silence for another half an hour, driving back into the city where Stiles’ dark and empty apartment is waiting for him, Boyd jiggling his leg up and down like he has more to say, but won’t say it, if only because he knows he won’t be heard. 

When they pull up to the curb outside his apartment, they’re waiting for him. Fans, paparazzi, the whole lot, and Stiles rubs at his eyes before putting his sunglasses back on. “I’m afraid of him, all right?” He confesses, hand on the door handle. 

Boyd blinks. Like he’s surprised to hear that. 

“He knows where I live, everywhere I live. He knows my friends, my family. Just…” he sucks in a big breath, then releases it, slow. “I can’t.” 

“Okay,” Boyd agrees. Then, he gets out, walks around the front of the car, and opens Stiles’ door for him. Stiles goes out in a cacophony of camera flashes and people screaming for him, and he signs more, takes more pictures, again and again, over and over.


	3. Six Weeks

Stiles decides that it’s okay if he likes Derek Hale a little bit. He makes the executive decision that he’s allowed to indulge himself with a hot guy, even if rationally and logistically, it could never go anywhere, not in the current state that he’s in. It may even be healthy, to pal around with someone who says nice things to him and pays for dinner and looks like…that. It has to be a good thing, because there are a lot of reasons why Stiles should be committing himself to a convent and swearing off men for the rest of his life, but that wouldn’t be a responsible, logical option. 

And again, it cannot possibly go anywhere. Stiles isn’t even stringing him along. He’s practically out there waving around a neon sign that says _EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE_ , for all that Stiles has made it crystal clear he could never dream of being in a relationship with the way things are for him right now. Maybe Derek doesn’t fully understand why, and maybe Derek likes Stiles more than he should, but what does it really matter? Stiles is going on tour. 

Which is why when Derek had called him and asked if Stiles wanted to go to lunch, Stiles had immediately agreed. He’s been at rehearsals for tour almost every single god damn day, and most of his spare time is sucked up with idiotic details about tour – like the pre-show playlist, having merch shoved at him and being asked if he likes it, incessant phone calls and reminders about his schedule, where he’s expected to be and when, and on, and on, and on. It’s enough to make him want a bowl of rat poison for breakfast. 

Lunch with Derek is the first non-tour related event he’s been at in days. They go to get tacos and sit outside in the early Summer breeze, Stiles with sunglasses on so he’s less easy to spot, but Derek with no cover-up whatsoever, out in the open, not a care in the world. That’s another thing that Stiles genuinely likes about Derek – he does not sit around and bemoan his fame and celebrity like it’s a cross he bears, like many of the people Stiles has met in the past and like Stiles has himself been known to do. He accepts it like it’s just something he signed on for, insisting on the façade of a normal life, even if that means he’s liable to have a meal interrupted by a fan coming up to say hello. 

Another thing that Stiles likes about Derek is he’s an unbelievably messy eater, to the point where it’s almost endearing. He’s struggling with his taco, because he’s loaded it with way too much guacamole and salsa for it to ever be able to make a safe trip to his mouth, and is now awkwardly trying to maneuver even a single bite out of it. 

“Have you ever eaten a taco before in your life?” Stiles asks, watching Derek fumble a huge chunk of meat so it lands onto his plate with a _thwap._

“It would appear not,” he says – when a big glob of sour cream dislodges itself from his whole taco and winds up on his pant leg, he goes, “Jesus fucking Christ,” in this exasperated tone that makes Stiles laugh. “Fuck it,” he picks up his fork and just starts cutting the thing up and eating it in chunks. 

“I’ve never seen a person eat a taco with a fork.”

“Well, get your camera out,” he jokes, cutting off another piece and shoveling it into his mouth. He winds up with some sauce on the corner of his lips, swipes it off with his hand, and Stiles bites his own finger. He is hot as sin, and Stiles, again, decides it’s okay if he thinks that. It’s not like he’s in love with the guy, thank god. 

“Actually, that’s not a bad idea,” he agrees, digging into his pocket to produce his phone. He pulls up his long-neglected instagram app and goes to his story, taking a quick video of Derek massacring his taco with his fork. He puts _baby’s first taco_ in big white letters over it and posts. It’s the first time he’s added to his story in a good long while, so he anticipates Lydia will have a brain aneurism when she sees it. 

It’s good promo for the album and the tour anyway, he figures. It’s weird how a stupid clip of Derek Hale eating a taco can make waves, but he is certain beyond any reasonable doubt that it will. Big ones. 

“Let me see,” Derek demands, leaning over Stiles’ shoulder to watch it repeat itself over and over. “You know, people are going to figure out where you are and come here.”

Stiles waves his hand, “eh, we’ll be long gone by then. Eat your taco.” 

Derek obliges. He shovels in, taking huge bites, and Stiles wonders if he has to write down everything he eats and then calculate the calories, figure out how much he’s going to have to run or do cardio to work all that off. It’s some weird thought that’s been occurring to Stiles a lot, lately, especially when he’s alone – Derek at the gym. He doesn’t know why. It’s fun to imagine it. Stiles tells himself this, too, is okay. He’s hot. It’s not a sin to think a man is hot. Last time he thought a guy was this hot he wound up in a living hell, yes, but Derek is…different. 

Derek never makes Stiles do things he doesn’t want to, like everyone else around him does. Derek never asks Stiles for much of anything, except company and time. Derek shows up when he says he will. He eats his taco with a fork. Malicious people don’t do things like that. 

Is it perhaps a red flag that Stiles’ entire attraction to Derek is based around Derek not treating him like a piece of fucking trash on the side of the road? Maybe. But it doesn’t matter. Tour is here in two days. He can fuck whoever he wants for whatever reason, because he’ll be leaving them behind in the dust before any real feelings could develop. 

Stiles watches Derek finish his taco and then chug his beer, like he’s just some dude at a frat party and not a millionaire, like Stiles’ bodyguard isn’t sitting at the table next to them waiting for them to be finished because Stiles can’t go anywhere without him. Stiles thinks for a second, about the gym again, and then he leans in to Derek real close, almost whispering in his ear so no one around will hear them. Derek tips his head, listening. “Do you want to go back to my place and fuck?”

He pulls away, and Derek does not seem phased by this, at all. He swallows what he has in his mouth, and then he copies Stiles’ exact movements – leans in, gets his mouth close to Stiles’ ear, and says, “yes.” 

Derek flags down the waiter and pays, signs the receipt with an instantly recognizable signature, and then hauls Stiles up to his feet and starts leading him off in the direction of Stiles’ place. It’s only three blocks from here, as a matter of fact, so with Boyd in tow they walk. It feels strange to Stiles still, after all the time he spent locking himself up and refusing to be seen in public, to just be out in broad daylight. He put a baseball hat on backwards and hid behind sunglasses, yes, but anyone who looked twice and knew who he was could spot him without much trouble. 

There’s this weird sense of being exposed, even in a place like New York City, where everyone doesn’t give a shit about you on the street. Stiles looks behind him just to see Boyd there, because it calms him, to know if something went South, Boyd would be there in a heartbeat to stop it. 

Stiles started bringing Boyd with him everywhere, after the breakup. He was afraid. Frankly, he still is. He stuffs his hands into his pockets and looks at the ground, while beside him, Derek is glaring down at his phone. He seems to be looking at a series of text notifications coming in lightning quick, and then he confirms this by saying, “Cora’s flipping.” Likely, over Stiles’ instagram story. She probably has his instagram alerts on, for Christ’s sake. 

“Haven’t you already told her you hang out with me?”

“Ah,” he hesitates, opening up the texts as they pause at an intersection, “I’ve been playing a bit coy.”

“So, you haven’t told her you know what my dick looks like.”

He guffaws, a quick laugh that he stifles down, shaking his head as he glares down at his phone screen. “As far as she knows, we just hang out every now and then.”

Then, Derek isn’t going around telling people in explicit detail that he’s fucking Stiles. This is good news, because Stiles has had the sneaking suspicion that Derek is into the idea of dating him. The fact that he’s not calling up friends and family to inform them about their coupling is a good sign that he’s not as invested as he seems, sometimes. 

As they cross the street, Stiles looks up and sees a photographer or two, snapping pictures of Stiles and Derek walking. He gets the immediate desire to duck himself behind Derek, sandwiching himself in between him and Boyd – when he was with Matt, he used to always use that guy as a human shield to protect him from the paparazzi. Having a guy around who was that size was good for things like that, after all. Derek’s not quite so gigantic, so he’s not as effective, and plus, what’s Stiles got to be hiding from anymore, anyway?

He has no bruises, no sullen sunken expressions on his face, no evidence of something he’s trying to hide. 

“She sort of thinks of you as this person who’s been in her life,” Derek is saying now, as Stiles somewhat reluctantly stops hiding behind him, though Stiles’ efforts to hide at all have been completely lost on Derek. “Or, an entity. I guess in a way you have been, she’s been listening to you since your debut.” 

“I’ve taken up space in people’s lives, yes,” he agrees, because it’s true. When someone buys his albums or streams them or puts his picture up on their wall, it’s like being a part of their lives in some weird, cosmic way. In a way he’s never aware of until he meets these people and they tell him. Some people think he’s their friend, or some people treat his music like therapy, or some people think they know him. 

“So the idea of me and you being together is sacrilege.” 

He used the word _together_ , Stiles notes. 

“In a sexual way, I mean,” he corrects. 

“Oh,” Stiles isn’t sure what to say to that. “What’s sacrilegious about tacos? Other than eating them with a fork.” 

“The horse is dead, already.”

“All right,” Stiles laughs. Derek is funny – in a very dry, deadpan way, but that’s the kind of humor Stiles likes, anyway. 

Outside Stiles’ apartment, a handful of photographers take their picture and shout things at them; there’s a _how are you doing, Stiles?_ , and then just his name to get his attention so he’ll look at the camera, but nothing too horrible. They both ignore it all anyway, Boyd hot on their trail as Stiles opens up the door to the building, single file up the steps to Stiles’ apartment door. 

He fumbles with his keys, while Derek leans up against the wall and appears to be texting. “What are you telling her?” Stiles asks, smirking as he jabs his key into the first lock, then the second. 

“That I swear I’ve never seen your dick,” he smirks back.

Stiles gets the third lock undone, pushing it open all the way. Boyd says not a word, just hangs back as Stiles and Derek file into the apartment, as Stiles closes the door more or less in his face. Stiles often lets him inside the apartment if he doesn’t feel like being all alone, but then, he’s never really all alone. He hasn’t been completely alone since he was eighteen years old, which is a thought that sometimes terrifies him and depresses him whenever he really lets himself think about it. 

But Boyd definitely does not need a front row seat for what’s about to happen. 

“I find it interesting how you tell her that mere moments before you’re going to be doing exactly that.” 

“Lying to my sisters is sort of a necessary evil,” he tucks his phone into his pocket, glancing around the room like he’s never been here before. Actually, he hasn’t been here since the first time they formally met one another, a few months ago at this point. It’s more or less the same. The maid has been through, so it’s neat and tidy, the coffee table scrubbed clean of the evidence that Stiles spent the night before drinking and playing his guitar like a sad sack of shit, the bottles in the trash that’s been taken out, his guitar tucked neatly into a corner. 

“Sisters? Plural?”

“Yes,” he watches Stiles sit down on the couch, watches Stiles take his hat off and ruffle his own hair. “I have seven.”

That gives Stiles some pause. He knew Derek had siblings sort of in a distant way, because he thinks he’s heard of Derek Hale having had a big family before, but that’s…news. “Um, seven? Like seven?”

“Seven.”

“Seven? All sisters?” 

“Yeah,” he seems amused at Stiles’ complete shock at this information. “It’s probably why I developed an attraction to men. Pictures of hot guys all over half the walls in my house growing up sort of planted the seed.”

Stiles smirks and points a finger at his chest, raising his eyebrows. “And I was one of the hot guys on the walls.” 

It’s more of a joke than anything else, but Derek nods his head, like yes, yes indeed. They’re staring at one another, and Stiles knows that both of them have been turned on since Stiles leaned in and whispered in Derek’s ear back at the restaurant, and both of them are acutely aware of the fact that they didn’t come back to Stiles’ place to sit and chat about Derek’s home life. Although, Stiles is interested. Seven sisters is a nightmarish reality Stiles could only dare to imagine, and he wants to know what it was like, especially since he was an only child. 

Stiles shouldn’t be interested in the details of his fuck buddy’s home life, but here he is, thinking about it all the same. 

“You want to go to your bedroom?” Derek suggests. It’s innocent, a completely rational, normal thing to ask given the situation, but Derek has no idea how much of a bad idea it is to ask Stiles that question. 

“No,” Stiles immediately says, sitting up straight and wiping the smile off of his face. He’s had sex with Matt in that room. A lot of sex. Tons. There are memories of being mistreated all over every inch of this apartment, yes, but in the bedroom, specifically, it’s…worse. There’s a crack in the wall where Stiles got shoved that he never managed to cover up, and the closet door had to be replaced after one particular altercation and the new one doesn’t match the rest of the room so it sticks out as a big red reminder, and Stiles just…can’t have sex with Derek in there. “In here is fine, it’s fine.” 

Derek makes that face. The one he always makes when Stiles says or does something that is inexplicable, and that no explanation will be given for, the one where he doesn’t press for information, but he knows that there is information to be pressed for. Derek is not a pusher, or someone who demands things from Stiles, so he demands nothing, asks no questions. He just makes that perceptive face and puts his hands in his pockets, because he’s not sure what it is that Stiles wants him to do. “All right, in here.”

Stiles pats the couch next to himself, so Derek moves. He sits down right there, in that exact spot, and then he folds his hands together in between his spread legs. He looks right at Stiles, his face open, honest, like he’s trying to convey himself as being trustworthy. Stiles never knows if that’s an actor’s trick, or if Derek really is just…honest. He lies to his sisters, but then, Stiles has lied to his dad a million times before. Lying to family is one thing. 

He’s doing that thing where he’s waiting for Stiles’ command, Stiles’ move, Stiles’ word. These are the moments where Stiles likes him the most, because it makes Stiles feel like he has some semblance of fucking agency in his life. It’s rare and fleeting, these moments where he feels like he’s in control of something, where he feels like if he said no or stop, then things would stop. 

“I want you,” Stiles tells him, point blank, and even just this statement makes him smile. It makes him feel so powerful to be able to say _I want this_ , and to be granted exactly what he wants. Sure, he can buy whatever he wants, fill his house with all the guitars he could ever dream of, but then the superficial things get old after a while – nothing beats feeling in control of one’s own life. 

Derek matches Stiles’ smile and he says, “c’mere,” the way he does, holding his arms open in invitation for Stiles, so Stiles moves closer and hooks his legs over Derek’s knees. He wraps his arms around Derek’s neck, cocking his head to the side as he does so. They lock eyes for a second, smiling at each other, and then Stiles leans in and kisses him. 

Stiles likes kissing Derek a whole lot. Derek is good at it, and so is Stiles, so the movements are natural and expert instead of clunky or awkward, especially now that they’re learning what each other’s bodies are like. Derek kisses intense and hot, grabbing at Stiles’ shirt and pulling him in closer, closer, as close as they can get in their position, until they’re on top of each other. Stiles climbs all the way into Derek’s lap, knees on either side of Derek’s thighs, so Derek has to lean his head back to keep kissing him. 

Pulling away, Stiles shrugs out of the button up he was wearing undone, and then tosses his t-shirt off to the side to lie on the ground with it. Derek is always taking his cues from Stiles, so he takes that as an invitation to remove his own t-shirt, and does so, agile and fast. He fits his hands on Stiles’ hips and squeezes a bit, diving upwards to get at Stiles’ mouth again. 

When Derek kisses Stiles’ neck, Stiles bursts out laughing because it tickles. This only makes Derek do it more, harder, until Stiles has to physically push Derek’s face away from him he’s laughing so much. “That’s a sensitive spot,” Derek says to him, “I’ll remember that.” 

“Okay, fine,” Stiles says, “then I’ll remember how ticklish your stomach is.” 

“Fine,” Derek agrees. “Then I’ll remember that spot behind your knee –“

“Then _I’ll_ remember how you eat tacos with a fork.”

Derek laughs, his whole body shaking with it. He’s got really white teeth like he gets them regularly attended to, so it really lights up his whole face when he laughs like that. He uses his grip on Stiles’ hips to heft him up, off of his body, onto the couch right next to him. He grabs Stiles by his belt loops, but he doesn’t manhandle him anywhere – he says, “you wanna get up on your knees?” 

Stiles does want to, so he nods his head and turns. He gets on his knees, digging them deep into the cushions, leaning his elbows on the hard back of the couch. As soon as he’s in that position, Derek reaches around and undoes Stiles’ jeans for him, his belt and his button and zipper, tugging them and his underwear off quickly.

Then, Derek presses himself against Stiles’ backside. He rubs his covered erection against Stiles’ body, slow and deliberately. A big hand comes in between Stiles’ spread legs and tugs, gently, at Stiles’ own erection, so Stiles can’t help it – he moans and arches his back, pressing his ass against Derek’s hard-on. 

“You are so _fucking_ sexy,” Derek tells him, and he means it, all the way. There’s not a doubt in Stiles’ mind that Derek means it, so it makes Stiles feel good. “I would fuck you any way you wanted me to.”

“Just like this is good,” Stiles tells him. His voice is breathy, loose, because he’s turned on and he wants Derek in him like fifteen minutes ago, wanted Derek in him back at the restaurant – if he could’ve gotten away with it, if they weren’t who they are, Stiles would’ve been happy to go to the bathroom at that place and let Derek fuck him against the sink in there. It has been so fucking long since sex has been a desirable act, has been something Stiles thinks about regularly, has been something that Stiles looks forward to instead of dreading. 

Stiles tells himself it’s fine that he wants Derek so bad. Who wouldn’t? 

Derek is undoing his jeans with this sort of frantic edge to him, his fingers moving quick and almost fumbling over the belt buckle – it’s flattering, to be wanted so badly. He pauses before he pulls them all the way off, reaching into his back pocket to produce a small tube of lube and a condom. Stiles watches this with a raised eyebrow. “Uh, you brought those along to tacos?”

“Stiles, you only see me when you want to fuck me,” he says, but he doesn’t sound put out or disappointed by this admission in any way, shape, or form. This is said more like something Derek knows and enjoys. Like he likes that Stiles just wants him that way. “Of course I brought these to tacos.” 

Without another word, Derek slicks up two fingers and immediately sticks them inside of Stiles. As he pumps them in and out, he reaches around to gently cradle Stiles’ sac in his palm, working them a bit with his fingers. It feels indescribably hot – he spreads his legs wider, bearing down on his elbows, looking over his shoulder to watch Derek finger him. 

Derek meets his eyes. “You like that?” He asks. Like he needed to.

“Uh, I think I do,” Stiles snorts, actually snorts – it’s unattractive, so he looks away, embarrassed by himself. “Sorry.”

“For what?” Derek asks. He’s still moving his fingers in and out, still holding Stiles’ balls in his hand, but he’s got this smile on his face, like Stiles is being funny. 

“Just –“ then, he doesn’t want to have to sit and explain how he’s used to apologizing for every single thing he does, especially during sex, so he just shakes it off and forgets, or focuses his best on forgetting. He focuses on Derek’s fingers in him, and turns and looks at Derek. Derek’s chest. Derek’s neck. Derek’s arms, the veins, the sexiest part about him. “I’m ready,” he says, voice a bit shaky. “I want you in me.”

Derek does not need to be asked twice. He moves to pick up the condom he had set down on the couch by one of Stiles’ knees, but Stiles interrupts him. “You don’t have to use a condom if you don’t want to.”

Derek pauses, holding the thing in his hand. “Are you sure?”

“Are you fucking anybody else?”

“No,” he says, so immediately it could only be the truth. Then, almost as though he’s been waiting to ask this question for a long time, he asks, “are you?”

“I don’t like anyone else enough to let them fuck me, trust me,” he rolls his eyes. “Just you.” 

Derek seems to take a second to absorb that information. He slowly sets the condom down on the coffee table behind him, and then he clears his throat and puts all his attention on slicking his dick up to go inside of Stiles’ body. For whatever reason, this admission that Stiles isn’t fucking anyone else seems to be a big deal to him, which is one of those instances Stiles was referring to earlier – he clearly likes Stiles. As more than a fuck friend. 

Stiles doesn’t have the mental energy to deal with that, so he just ignores it, for now. Derek takes one of Stiles’ hips in his hand, uses his other hand to angle his dick, and then he’s all the way in. He takes a second to breathe, and he maneuvers Stiles just a bit; he moves Stiles’ body deeper into the couch, so he has room to climb up behind him, his knees digging in right next to Stiles’. “Is this okay?”

“Yeah,” Stiles agrees, looking over his shoulder to see Derek’s face. 

He thrusts, digging himself in as deep as he can get, then pulling out. “Fuck,” he says – maybe it’s been a while since he’s had sex without a condom. With both hands, he takes Stiles’ hips again and uses them to push Stiles’ body on his cock, off, on, off, again and again. It’s quick, and then he stops, abruptly, to ask, “is that too hard?”

“No, it’s good, it’s really good, harder,” Stiles commands, and for the first time since they started hooking up, he dares to lower his head into his arms, to close his eyes, to not think too much. Derek fucks him, hard, so hard Stiles’ body shakes, his moans come out choppy and clipped from the force of it, but it’s good. It’s so fucking good. Stiles has not felt this good in forever, or at least not since the last time Derek fucked him. He closes his eyes and just enjoys it, doesn’t have to concentrate so hard on remembering it’s Derek, on remembering where he is – he just enjoys it. 

Derek pauses again, to rub his hands up and down Stiles’ back a few times. Stiles is panting into his arms, forehead pressed against the back of the couch, his body tightening up. He wants Derek to fuck him until he can’t move, for real. “Tell me what you’re thinking,” Derek suddenly says, still buried down to the root, but holding still. 

“I’m thinking,” Stiles starts, lifting his head up so he can turn and look over his shoulder, “that I don’t want you to stop.” 

Derek grins at him. The wolf grin. All teeth. 

It goes on – Derek holds Stiles’ hips and fucks him, fucks him. Stiles feels good, because Derek is ridiculously good at knowing what angle to hit and how fast to hit it, but it’s not just good. It’s, like, too much. Stiles knows he’s being loud, knows that Boyd can probably hear this, but he doesn’t care; he wants to be loud. He wants to have ridiculous sex in the middle of the day and moan so loud everyone hears him, he wants people to take he and Derek’s picture right before they go up to Stiles’ apartment so everyone knows they’re fucking. Fuck it. 

It builds up inside of him, that insanely good feeling, and Stiles is shaking. He says, “you’re gonna make me fucking come,” all incredulous and high, so Derek doesn’t stop. He only goes harder, faster, like he wants to see Stiles do it. He wants to see Stiles fall apart right underneath him. It’s only ten or fifteen seconds later that Stiles is keening, coming all over his couch cushions and not caring about it, going lax underneath Derek’s body. 

Derek is still finishing, but Stiles is spent. He feels Derek’s dick jerking inside of him, and he buries his face in his arms again. Jesus Christ, he thinks. Jesus fucking Christ. 

“God,” he says out loud, as Derek is going still and grunting, holding onto Stiles’ body as he comes. “Oh, my God. Oh, fuck.”

“Yeah,” Derek agrees, a bit brainless. He sounds sort of at a loss for words. 

“I haven’t come from a dick in, like…” he trails off, still buried into the couch, “fuck, I forgot how that feels.” 

Derek slides out of him. There’s come probably dripping out of Stiles’ body and come on the couch and come on the pillows, but Stiles doesn’t care. He moves, flopping down onto his backside so he’s sitting, and he feels all…stiff. A really good fuck will do that to a person. Derek sits right next to him, so they both just sit there in silence for a minute or two, panting, breathing, sweaty. 

“That was the Stiles Stilinski sex god you were referring to,” Derek says, apropos of nothing.

“Huh?”

“When we first had sex, you said, I must have been expecting Stiles Stilinski sex god. That was him, just now.”

“Oh,” Stiles mulls that over for a second. The first time they had sex, when Stiles was nervous and scared and worried of getting manhandled and thrown around, but none of that had happened. And then the second time was similar, but again, none of that had happened. The third time, none of that had happened. The fourth. Now, the fifth, and Stiles was getting used to it. “Oh, I did nothing. I just got my brains fucked out.”

“The noises you made,” Derek says, so Stiles turns his head to look at him. “You know you’re the sexiest living person?”

“Oh, shut up,” Stiles snorts again, shoving at Derek’s arm. “You were the one who actually made it into People’s top ten sexiest men list.” 

“You were in the beautiful people issue.”

Oh, right, that. Stiles had forgotten about that. It was years ago, maybe three or four now. Not sexiest, not him, but beautiful people, he had gotten into. They took his picture for it and everything. Back then, Stiles sort of was pretty attractive – it was before all those bad things happened, and he wasn’t miserable, and he wasn’t drinking all the time, and he was really young and cute, so…yeah. It’s bizarre Derek remembers that, but then, Stiles had remembered Derek was in the sexiest list, so it all evens out. 

Stiles grabs at his pants down on the ground, so then, Derek does the same. As they both stand up, shimmying their underwear and pants back on, Derek jerks his chin in the direction of the other side of the room. “I never noticed your piano over there.”

As if he also never knew there was a piano there, Stiles turns and looks. There it is, immaculate and white and shiny, with the cover closed over the keys. He hasn’t played it in forever, maybe not since he was writing the record, so the only reason it’s not covered in dust is because the maid comes in and dusts it once a week. 

“That thing is huge,” Derek goes on, buttoning his pants. 

“It’s a grand piano, they generally are,” he smiles. 

Derek puts his t-shirt on, and Stiles puts his own on. Derek says, “you should play something on it.”

This immediately tracks as a joke; Stiles laughs and shakes his head. “Oh, sure.”

“I’m serious,” he says. A quick glance at his face shows that he’s smiling, yes, but only with mirth. He’s serious, not joking at all, and Stiles blinks at him. It has been a long time, a very long time, since someone in this apartment has demanded he play something for them. Really, it’s been a long time since anyone has asked Stiles to just…play something. He gets told to play certain songs, and be certain places with his band, and stand on certain stages; but he has not just simply played a song for someone in ages. 

Matt hated when he played the piano, in specific. That piano. Honestly, it’s a wonder he didn’t go berserk one night and try to destroy it, or something. He hated when Stiles wrote songs, or fiddled around on it, or touched it even. In hindsight, Stiles knows now that Matt just hated that Stiles had something that was separate from him, something Matt couldn’t control, something that was just Stiles’ and Stiles’ alone, that he was good at, but at the time, it had been deeply hurtful, and had felt like maybe that meant he wasn’t as good at it as he thought. It sort of stuck, for a long time, the idea that he was banned from playing his piano. Even now, he feels the need to ask if it’s okay if he does. 

“You want me to play something?” He asks, and Derek nods his head, gesturing to it, and then moving toward it. When Stiles doesn’t move, Derek laughs and puts his hand on Stiles’ back, guiding him forward. 

“Don’t be shy. You’ve got a world tour coming up, so you need to dust off the cob webs.” 

“There are no cob webs,” he insists, even as he’s awkwardly sitting down on the bench like he had forgotten how. Derek sits down right next to him, right there, so their bodies are touching. No one has ever sat with him like this at the piano – not since he finished his piano lessons in elementary school. Stiles looks at him and feels bizarre, and Derek looks back.

He pushes the cover open, so the white and black keys are all out on display, shiny, perfectly lined up. Stiles swallows. “What do you want me to play?”

“How about, Sea Monster, my favorite song?”

“All right. We’ve joked about it so many times, I’m starting to think you hate Sea Monster.”

Derek laughs, shaking his head. “I like Sea Monster. It’s just funny to joke about it.”

“So, then, what’s your actual favorite song of mine?”

Stiles half expects Derek to say he doesn’t really know that many of them, or he can only recognize them when his sisters play them or they come on the radio but that he knows none of them by title. “Swimming With Sharks,” he says, and Stiles thumps his hands down in surprise, so the keys go _bwooommmm._

“Uh, seriously?” He rears his neck back. “That is a deep fucking cut, dude.” 

Derek shrugs. “It’s my honest favorite song of yours.”

It’s a song from his third record. As a matter of fact, it’s from Free At Last, the album with the tour that Cora told Stiles she went to see six times, the one that Derek had admitted he had seen before with her. It had Sea Monster, too, the big hit that it was, and up until The Standing Dead came out, it was his renowned best album, at least where his fans were concerned. Swimming With Sharks was not a big hit. It was a song people went nuts for on tour, yes, but only the die hard fans, not the random people who showed up to hear, yup, Sea Monster. 

“Play it,” Derek asks him again, gesturing to the keys. 

“Um,” Stiles laughs again. He poises his fingers over the keys, and he doesn’t know why, but he’s nervous. He has people staring at him while he plays music all day, every day, has had people staring at him play music for years, now, but Derek’s eyes feel different to him. Not critical, or judgmental, like Matt’s would be – just intense, watching, like he really wants to see Stiles play this fucking song. Like maybe he’s often thought about getting to watch Stiles play this song. “Let’s see if I remember how to play it.”

“I’m sure you do,” Derek grins at him. 

It’s been a couple years since he’s played it. He noodles about for a second, realizes he’s in the wrong key, and then moves down. He tries that, and it’s right. He plays the intro, while Derek sits there and watches his fingers move like he’s impressed by it, fascinated. Stiles blushes and feels silly, really silly, grinning from ear to ear. 

It’s normally played on the acoustic guitar – but, he had actually initially written it on the piano, this piano, so he remembers just slightly how it was meant to be played. He starts singing the chorus, but it’s hard, because he’s laughing as he does, shaking his head like he can’t believe he’s really doing this, while Derek sits there and watches him. It’s ridiculous to be playing this song while laughing, because it’s sort of a somber love song about this jackass he dated around then. He makes all kinds of overzealous proclamations, referencing the Marianas Trench and Challenger Deep and all this other nonsense. 

Though it seems dumb to him now because that guy did turn out to be a jackass, the song does still sort of strike a chord with him. It’s a good song. He’s still surprised Derek knows it. Let alone knows it well enough to proclaim it as his favorite. 

He finishes the chorus and lets the last chord ring out, burying his hands into his lap as soon as he does, out of embarrassment. Derek says, “your voice sounds even better up close.”

“Shut up,” Stiles says, blushing. 

“It does,” he insists, and he’s looking at Stiles with this totally awestruck look, like he can’t believe Stiles can really sing, or something. “Free At Last really is your best album.”

Stiles looks away. “Not the new one?”

“Don’t make me compare and contrast,” he waves his hands, as though to wave away the conversation altogether. “I just like that one, is all.” 

Stiles has always really liked that one, too. It was special to him at the time; the happiest, best time of his life. That’s what the third record always represents to him, whenever he thinks about it. The tour, the fans, the music videos, the press, everything about it. He misses singing Free At Last every night, he misses the energy of that song, that record; maybe now, more than ever. Going into this miserable tour, where he’s miserable, the songs are miserable, all of it…it makes him miss it even more. 

“Did I tell you I got another job?” He says, pulling Stiles out of his daydream. “I go to Vancouver to shoot in a couple of weeks.”

“And I go on tour in a couple of days,” he says, so then they’re just looking at each other, basking in the knowledge that when Derek comes to opening night at Madison Square Garden on Friday, it’ll likely be the last time they see each other for a good long while. The first leg goes well into the middle of summer, and then the second leg will strike and likely finish off before the holidays. “What’s the movie? Dead By Sunrise five?”

“No,” he grins, “something a bit more serious than that.” 

“Your Oscar fodder film, is it?”

“Could be,” is what he says, evasively. Stiles actually doesn’t know much about Derek’s work or career – Derek doesn’t talk about it all that much, especially since the whole time they’ve been fucking around, Derek hasn’t been working at all. 

“Where’d you get this crazy scar?” He changes the subject abruptly, pulling at Stiles’ wrist, turning his arm out so the scar itself is out on full display. 

Stiles immediately rips his arm out of Derek’s grasp and tucks it back and away again, hiding it from his eyes.

“Uh, it’s –“ he starts, but his mind is already going someplace else. He got this scar in the bathroom sitting just behind them, closed up tight behind the door. There used to be a big expensive mirror in that bathroom, hanging in the wall over the sink. One night, Stiles had locked himself in that room to get away from Matt during a particularly bad fight, and Matt had broken in, broken the lock, and he broke the mirror. He hit Stiles in the face, hard enough it knocked him down, into the broken glass, the sharp edges cutting into his skin. When he had tried to crawl up and away from the broken glass, Matt kicked him right back down into it, shouting at him to not get up, don’t you fucking dare get up. He remembers after, Matt apologizing to him, picking the glass out of his arm, saying he didn’t know what had come over him, he wouldn’t do it again, he’s sorry, so sorry, he won’t do it again, I love you baby, I won’t hurt you like that again.

“…incident with a mirror,” he says, clearing his throat. 

Derek looks at him. He knows that’s not true.

**

Normally before a show, the band gets together and they do a whole pre-show thing with chanting and cheering and keying each other up. They used to all be together backstage, sitting and talking and getting ready, even when Stiles started getting his own dressing room because he became a big enough star to be playing big enough venues to have his own dressing room.

Now, Stiles has holed himself up all alone in said dressing room, staring at himself in the mirror. He had been provided with a rack of clothes to pick from thanks to his stylist, and all of it was meant to be themed according to the rest of the tour. It’s all black, grunge, dark, moody pieces that he makes faces at. He winds up in black pants and a black v-neck, his old black converse, and he feels like he looks ridiculous. 

During soundcheck, everyone kept staring at him like they expected him to run off stage screaming, or something. There were already fans waiting outside, listening, going insane every time they heard a familiar song being checked. It made Stiles anxious, to think of all those people who paid to see him, when he’s like this. He is in no shape to be here right now. He can only disappoint them, he knows it, and that makes him feel like shit. 

He pours himself a shot of bourbon and takes it. Then, another. The thought occurs to him that he can’t do this, he cannot fucking do this, he would give anything to not have to do this, but then, it doesn’t matter. He couldn’t back out of this even if he tried, even if he wanted to. He couldn’t let people down. He couldn’t make that much of an asshole out of himself. 

There are three hard knocks on his door. Scott pokes his head in, and he’s giving Stiles that look again. That _I wonder if he’s going to fuck this up_ look that every single one of them has been giving him since this entire charade started. “Uh, you’ve got like three minutes.” 

“Okay,” he says. He looks at himself one last time in the mirror. His styled hair, his all black outfit, and he hates what he sees, a whole fucking lot. There’s nothing he can do about that now, so he just turns on his heel and heads towards Scott, the open door, the hallway. 

As they walk together, Scott clears his throat. “I didn’t mean to be a dick to Derek at the album release,” he says, out of nowhere. Scott hasn’t brought Derek Hale up at all, not since that night, so Stiles is surprised to hear this. “Uh…you guys are going out?” Lots of people likely think that Stiles and Derek are going out. The pictures of them together likely do the rounds every single day, and who knows what they print about them? Who knows what they say? 

“No,” he answers. He’s feeling brutally honest tonight, so he goes on. “We fuck, sometimes.” 

“Oh,” Scott sounds incredibly displeased with this information. He probably thinks that’s not healthy or something, but what the hell is he supposed to say, now? Two minutes before he’s supposed to be up on that fucking stage? “Well…he’s good looking. Look, Stiles,” he stops, so they’re right at the end of the hall, right by the stage, where Stiles can hear thousands of people out there talking, talking, the music playing over their heads, “I know this tour is hard for you and you’d rather be peeling potatoes or something than be here right now.” 

Stiles blinks at him. 

“But I know you can do it,” he says, which is not where Stiles thought he was going with this. He thought Scott was going to warn him to not fuck it up, to say he better not be drunk, to say he better not be on something, or something along those lines. “This is what you do, remember? You’re the kid who used to pretend to be the person who’s going to be up there on that stage, remember?” 

He does remember. He remembers being ten with his first guitar that was already beat to hell with how obsessively he played it, having Scott pretend to be an audience as he bowed and blew air kisses and said shit like “I love you New York!!!” 

Scott takes him by his shoulder and squeezes. He has no idea how much of a gesture this is, how badly Stiles needed to be reminded of who he is, but it doesn’t matter. He squeezes Stiles’ shoulder and gives him a thin smile, and he says, “you’re a fucking rockstar, and a professional, so just go out there and be that person.” 

Crew members with headsets are everywhere, and one of them grabs Scott and starts telling him he needs to get up there, the lights are shutting off in twenty seconds, he needs to get on stage, and then Stiles is left standing there, watching his back as he disappears, vanishing. Stiles stands there alone for maybe twenty seconds, listening to the final song of his pre-show playlist. It’s Free At Last, and they’re all singing along. 

Someone appears, holding Stiles’ black electric guitar. He takes it, slings it on, and then he’s guided to the platform that’s going to raise him up and put him up on that stage. He stands there and his heart is hammering in his chest, hammering, so loud he can’t barely hear anything else. Even when the lights go out and the screaming starts, he can’t fucking hear it. Even when the drums start and the bass and everything else, it’s like he’s hearing it from outside, in the parking lot, like he’s just another fan and not… him. He wishes more than anything else that he could stop being him. 

The platform starts to raise, and he can’t do it. He knows he can’t do it. He used to be told every fucking day that he couldn’t fucking do this. It sticks. Some things just stick. It’s useless to think it either way, because whether he likes it or not, he’s on stage. There’s smoke billowing at him, all around him, and his silhouette is visible – all they see is his silhouette, and they lose their minds. He’s here. 

He walks forward, like they practiced, and stands right in front of his microphone stand, like they practiced. There’s the setlist taped down at his feet, and he stares at it. All those songs. For two hours he’s going to be up here. Two. Hours. 

The music cuts, and finally, the spotlight comes on. The big screens come on, and he’s on all of them, cameras tracking his every move. People scream, and Stiles just stands there. He smiles, stiff and false, looking out across the crowd, glittering signs and flashing lights and cell phones as far as the eye can see, and he knows Derek Hale is out there somewhere, watching this, too. 

He knows the band is waiting for him, and they’ll keep waiting. He could just stand here all night, not moving, not doing a single fucking thing. He could. He thinks about it. Instead, he poises his fingers, turns around and meets Scott’s eyes. He’s up on a platform, so even behind all the drums, they can look at each other. 

Stiles mouths _one_ , before turning back around to face the crowd. One, two, three, four, and he starts playing. He had rehearsed it so many times it’s mechanical, lifeless, walking up to his microphone and singing the words like he couldn’t care less about them. In the end, it’s all the same; even if he’s barely there at all, they all cheer and clap for him, sing along, every word. He locks eyes with some of the girls in the very front, and some of them are crying, because he’s right there, right there, so close they could almost touch him – he remembers how that feels. When your favorite artist in the entire world, the one whose albums you play and play until the CD doesn’t work anymore, is standing right in front of you. 

It’s bizarre for him, now more than ever, to think he’s that person for anyone. All the same, he is, and he’s fucking halfassing it, and he knows he is. After the first song, he knows he should say something. He knows he’s supposed to greet the crowd and talk to them and rev them up, do something, fucking anything, but he can’t think of anything to say. 

He gestures for the next song. The band shares looks, but they go along with it. It goes on like that, song after song, Stiles refusing to speak, barely leaving the safety net of his corner with his microphone and his guitar, until they get to Nausea. It’s the angriest song on the record by a landslide, and frankly Stiles doesn’t dread the thought of playing it like he does most of the rest of the record, because it’s almost cathartic to play it. It’s not Nausea itself that has him stuttering over the words, fucking up the chords, shaking his head angrily and storming away from the microphone to try and correct himself – Nashville is next, and he knows it, and his hands are shaking. 

There’s this insane thought in his head to just skip it. Consequences be damned, he’ll just fucking skip it tonight. Lydia will go bonkers and scream at him and ask him what the fuck is the matter with him, and the band will be angry with him because he’s fucking up, he’s screwing them over, all this other shit. It’s tempting. 

Nausea ends. He stands there for a second, staring at the crowd and imagining what they would think if he just didn’t play it. If he just stood there and looked at them and told them he can’t do it, what would they do? 

All the same, he takes his electric guitar off and holds it out to the stage hand who’s holding his acoustic. She hands it to him, he says thanks, puts it on. He strums it a few times out of habit, just to hear it in his ear piece, to make sure it’s working. Erica is standing there in his periphery, and she’s staring at him like she fully expects him to not do it. She’s got this look on her face, her hands folded on top of her bass, her lips pursed. 

She’s waiting for him to fuck up. Scott gives him a thumbs up from behind the drums, which Stiles shakes his head at before turning back to face the fans. He still has not said a fucking word to them. 

He walks up to the microphone. He licks his lips and sucks a deep breath in – it echoes, echoes, across the arena, to the back, all the way to the nosebleeds, they hear him hesitating. Fuck it, he thinks. 

The intro is familiar, immediate, instantaneous. He gets seven seconds into it and they all lose their fucking minds. It’s the only song that opens with an acoustic guitar, so of course they know it, and hell, maybe Lydia and everyone else was right. This is the best song on the record, and everyone agrees, and they all want to hear it, have been waiting all night since he schlepped up on stage to bore them all to death. Standing up here, like a robot, barely looking at them. 

The response is immediate and loud. Stiles can’t help but to laugh in spite of himself, walking away from the microphone and taking his hands off of his guitar to press them to his eyes. It’s not that he’s genuinely entertained or finds it funny that they love this song – it’s more the opposite. It’s funny, in some cosmic sense, that of course exactly what he expected to happen has happened. 

They cheer more when they see him laughing. It’s the most emotion he’s showed all night long, so of course, they love it. He sobers up a bit, and then he walks back to his post, feeling the eyes of his band on the back of his neck as he does so. Standing. Waiting. 

He sighs, again. Just for something to do with his hands, he adjusts his capo, then moves it right back to where it had been in the first place. For the first time since he walked out here, he speaks into the microphone. “You guys know this song,” he says, and they agree, loud, enthusiastic. He adjusts his capo, again. Puts it back where it was, again. After another few beats, he says, “you guys like this song.” 

More screaming. They love this fucking song. Stiles smiles, rueful, miserable. They read it for something else, and scream some more. 

Once they quiet down again, he clears his throat and shakes his head, lifting his eyes to actually look out at them instead of staring down at his feet. “Well, you know something? I don’t like this song that much,” he scrunches his nose up and shrugs. “I hate this fucking song.”

He has made a living off of being brutally honest, with these people. On previous tours, he would get up on this stage and introduce half the songs with long speeches about what they were about, in so many words – no names were ever named, but then, they didn’t need to be. He would tell them about what it felt like to feel that way, how much it had hurt, or how good it had felt, and they would all agree, because they had all felt like that at some point, too. It was always a point of solace, for him, to look out and have people singing his lyrics back to him. 

It always felt like someone saying, _I know how you feel_. It was rewarding. 

He remembers how it had felt to write this song. He remembers that it was this great big release, an exhalation of a breath he had been holding in since the first time Matt treated him like garbage, and it made him feel alive. To write it out. To be honest about it. Even in writing, in his journal, at his piano, alone, it felt like telling someone else. No one else ever knew, except him, and his piano, but his piano sometimes felt like another person. 

He wants to go back to feeling that way. Like it’s a release. Like he’s telling them what happened to him. 

“It’s hard for me to –“ he starts, stops. Clears his throat. “It’s hard for me to sing this song. I wonder if maybe you wouldn’t mind helping me,” he backs away and looks out at them all, as they clap and cheer. Someone to his left, somewhere out in the crowd, screams, _Matt Harding suuuuucks_ , and Stiles looks at his shoes. Smiles, in spite of himself. He shouldn’t respond to it, Lydia will have his fucking neck, and it will be an article, and Matt will see it, but he can’t…help himself. He says, “he does.” That’s all he says, but people laugh, everyone who heard it laughs, and he shrugs. 

“Uh, anyway,” he smirks, strumming a few times for good measure. “This is Nashville.” 

He makes it through the intro, all the way through, to screams and cheers, and he keeps his neck bowed, his head low, his lips in a grim line. When he looks up and starts the first verse, he can barely hear himself, over the sound of people screaming it back at him. It’s almost worse, that way, to hear it echoed and reverberated, multiplied by a thousand, his own voice in his earpiece, their voices all around him. 

When he gets to the chorus, he chokes up. He pulls away and frowns, and they keep singing for him. All the way through it, even as Stiles tries to join in, he can’t, just pulls away and shakes his head. His voice cracks and he can’t, can’t, walking away from the microphone as the second verse starts up.

He keeps playing. When he starts to cry, everyone can see it. It’s on the big screens, all four of them, huge, massive, no one could miss it. They’re zooming in on it, they must be. It’s a good show, after all. Stiles tries to shake it off; the bridge comes and he starts it, makes it through the first sentence before he’s pulling away again, biting his lip to keep from bursting out sobbing, shaking his head some more. 

They sing it louder, louder, louder. 

When it finally ends, Stiles immediately stalks off stage, leaving behind the hysteria out in the crowd. He pulls his guitar off of his body and there’s someone waiting to take it from him, holding a bottle of water, offering it to him without saying a word. He takes it, rips it out of their hands and spits, “thanks,” swiping angrily at his tears before taking a big sip.

There’s an intermission at this point, anyway – the band is playing this ominous sounding introduction for the next song, while Stiles stands here in the wings having a complete fucking breakdown. He needs to be out there again in forty-five seconds, he knows, but he stands here and drinks his water and thinks there’s no god damn way he can do that again. And again. And again. And again.

And again. 

He thinks about the bed, in his apartment in Nashville. He thought he was going to die there, in his blue bedroom, like the ocean, like the sea, like drowning. He thought that a person he loved, yes, loved, in spite of all the hell they put him through, was going to kill him. Nobody knows this, because Stiles only said he was drowning in the song and no one knows what that means, no one would make the connection between being choked in a blue bedroom and drowning in the blue sea, but he wants to go out there and grab the microphone and say it. 

“I was abused,” he imagines himself saying. The audience going quiet. The silence. “This whole album is about my abuse and I can’t stand to be up here singing it just to entertain you.” 

He’d never say that. They’d never believe him. Who, Matt Harding? He carries the team! We love him! He’s the best! You’re lying! You are a liar! 

All the same, he puts the cap on the water, and hands it back to her. She has his electric guitar again, and he takes it, puts it on, sniffling and wiping at his face. He still looks terrible, he knows it, but they love it when he looks terrible. They love it when he’s struggling. It gives them something to talk about.

**

After the show, he expects Lydia to berate him. He fully expects the entire band and even the crew to surround him and start in on an intervention, because that was, hands down, the worst show he has ever played in his life. Normally, he’s high energy on stage. He speaks. He moves around, he’s into the songs, he plays like he gives a fucking shit about it.

Tonight, he was a corpse up there. After Nashville, it only got worse. He had to play the title track, and it made him feel like a fucking human punching bag, sitting up there at this huge black piano, having the words sang back to him. Even Sea Monster, with all its verve and pep, he barely gave any energy to. 

He goes backstage and dumps his guitar on the first crew member he sees, while the band trickles in behind him. Erica says, “I didn’t realize I was touring with fucking Eeyore the donkey,” she spits at him. It’s not one of her better insults, so Stiles just blinks and frowns, looking at the rest of them. 

Scott is shrugging his shoulders, Lydia in the background standing with her arms crossed and her lips in a tight line. Stiles braces himself for what is sure to be the verbal lashing of a century, but she doesn’t say anything. Just stands there, staring at him. This is almost worse. 

“I’m having a hard time,” he says, but none of them care. “I’m just rusty.” 

“It was fine,” Lydia says, shrugging her shoulders. Maybe it was fine. He wasn’t drunk, which is always a plus. He didn’t smash his guitar in front of everyone, so that’s good. He didn’t get on the microphone and start in on a diatribe about something or other, didn’t embarrass himself by doing anything completely out of left field. 

He just hadn’t done….anything. Is this really as good as they all think he can do, now? 

“Your boyfriend is here,” Erica says to him with a vicious point of her finger over Stiles’ shoulder. Stiles whips around, and sure enough, there’s Derek Hale. He’s got the backstage pass Stiles had bestowed upon him hanging around his neck. He’s wearing a white v neck and dark jeans and he looks so good, clean, awake, put together, it makes Stiles immediately embarrassed that he had to stand there and watch Stiles make an ass out of himself in front of thousands of people. 

Stiles approaches him, nervously twiddling his fingers as he does so. Derek does not look uncomfortable or weird or like he’s thinking _what the hell am I supposed to say to Stiles after that pathetic display_ – he is smiling. He opens his arms up, as though for a hug. 

None of his asshole friends offered to hug him, even though it was completely obvious Stiles needed one. As a result, Stiles throws himself at Derek’s open arms, burying himself into Derek’s chest and neck, hiding there even as Derek wraps him up and holds him close. “That was amazing,” Derek tells him, and Stiles squeezes his eyes shut. 

“Don’t be nice,” he muffles into Derek’s neck. “It was a train wreck.” 

“What?” Derek pushes Stiles away just enough that he can look Stiles in the face. Stiles has got red, puffy eyes, a frown, and Derek stares at him, as though he’s really confused. “What makes you say that?” 

“I just fucking –“ he inhales a sharp breath. Everyone who isn’t tasked with breaking the stage down is just milling around behind them, probably listening to their every word. “I couldn’t – it was bad.” 

Derek blinks at him. He says, his voice very measured, “I thought that was all part of the act.” 

Is that what people thought? Stiles standing up there like a fucking depressed statue come to life was just part of the show? Him crying his eyes out to Nashville was just part of the fucking show? Even Derek, who knows him (sort of) is of the opinion it was just … for the show. 

“Oh,” Stiles shakes his head. “It was.” 

Derek is looking at him that way again, but Stiles just shakes it off and forces a smile onto his face.

“Just…opening night, there’s a lot of kinks to work out. Like, hey, maybe I shouldn’t be physically incapable of singing a song to the point where the audience has to sing it for me.” 

“Well, that’s a sad song,” Derek says. He does not ask for more information. He wants it, yes he does, because who wouldn’t? But he doesn’t press the issue at all. “Hey look,” he takes Stiles by his shoulder and guides him off, away, to the side, farther from anyone’s prying eyes or eavesdropping ears. “I know you and I aren’t going to see each other for a while.” 

There’s crew moving huge pieces of stage, packing up all of Stiles’ guitars, Scott’s drums piece by piece, all around them. It’s loud. 

“You have a break at some point, don’t you?” 

Stiles nods. “A couple weeks in July.” A whole month and a half away, he has a break. It’s depressing to think about it. 

“Come to Vancouver,” he suggests. That’s where he’s filming his movie, where he’ll still be filming most likely when Stiles will get his break. “I have a house there. It’s quiet. I just thought maybe you’d like to… get away.” 

Stiles has not seen very much of Vancouver. He’s played there once or twice, if memory serves him correctly, but those were quick get in and get out situations where he didn’t get much of an opportunity to actually, you know, SEE Vancouver – for all he knows, it’s the greatest place on earth. From how Derek says it like it’s some great escape from reality, even just for a little while, maybe Vancouver really is the greatest place on earth. 

And Stiles wants to go. Especially after what just happened. With the weight of months and months of having to do this over and over on his shoulders. He wants to go someplace he’s never really been and he wants to hide in a quiet house where if he cries no one’s going to see it on giant mega screens or plastered all over the front page of The Sun or Us Weekly. And most importantly, though it freaks him out to note it is the most important thing, he really wants to go with Derek. 

Derek is asking him to go. Not telling him. Not making him. He has no idea how much of a comfort that is. 

“Okay,” he agrees after only a moment’s hesitation. “Yeah, okay, I’d –“ he reaches out and grabs Derek’s wrist, squeezes it, in some hope of relaying just how kind of a gesture it really is, to Stiles. “…I would love to.” 

Derek grins at him. He’s got such shiny, shiny teeth. “Can I see your tour bus?” 

Stiles doesn’t know why, but he immediately laughs at this request. Less than an hour ago he was up on stage practically weeping in front of thousands of people, and now back here in this corner with Derek Hale, he’s laughing. It’s just such a silly thing to ask. “All right. I’ve gotta get my ass on that thing anyway. Come on,” he gestures, so Derek follows him. 

They weave their way through the crew trying to get their job done, big cases lying around all over the floor, people moving frantically fast because they’re all on a schedule. They go down past where the band is hovering around drinking beer that was likely meant to be celebratory for having gotten through opening night but is now being enjoyed as they murmur to one another about how Stiles isn’t acting like himself at all or any number of other things they could possibly say about him. They side eye Derek and Stiles as they pass; Stiles gives them a perfunctory wave, but otherwise ignores them. 

Stiles takes Derek all the way to the lot where the buses are lined up and waiting to be loaded full of the stage, the equipment, the crew, the band, and Stiles. Back on Stiles’ first headlining tour, he and Scott shared a bus and would go nuts in there every night, drinking even though they were only nineteen, watching movies, playing video games. Even on Stiles’ third tour, when Stiles could have had his own bus, he still went with Scott. It was only the last tour, when he was with Matt, that he got his own bus entirely to himself. There were a lot of reasons for that. 

Now, he still has his own. He climbs up the steps with Derek in tow and reaches the main section, gesturing with his arms out like ta-da. Derek looks around and he seems impressed, gazing in at the couches and tables, countertops, cabinets, the huge television. “This is a house,” Derek says. 

“Oh, you haven’t seen anything yet,” Stiles pushes open the door to the bathroom, so Derek can gaze inside. It’s not like the tiny, cramped bathrooms one might find on an airplane or on a regular passenger bus - it’s a real bathroom, with a shower he can move around in, and a sink. Derek is impressed, again. “Let me show you where I sleep.” 

“That’s really what I was interested in,” he quips, like it’s a joke, but Stiles is certain that Derek means it, to some extent. 

He guides Derek to the back, where his door is shut up tight. He pulls it open and leads Derek in. His bags are already in here, suitcases stuffed full of clothing and books and everything else he could possibly need to keep himself occupied on the road. It’s not really that much to look at – just a bed pushed against a wall with a window that has the shutters closed, a dresser, a closet, a night stand. It’s really more the fact that this is a BUS that makes it impressive. It looks like a hotel room. A nice hotel room, yes, but a hotel nonetheless. 

“Do you like sleeping on this thing?” He asks, gesturing to the room in general. 

“I used to get really bad motion sickness, actually. I’d puke my brains out every night the first tour,” he shrugs, smiling at the memory. “I got over it at some point, because my body had no choice. Now I sleep like a baby on this thing. After a show I’m usually pretty exhausted, so.” 

Derek sits down on the edge of the bed and looks around some more. He looks at Stiles’ bags, Stiles’ guitar case, Stiles’ bedsheets. The last time Stiles was standing in this tour bus, he was still in a relationship with Matt, which is bizarre to think about, now. Now, Derek Hale is here. Sitting exactly where Matt had sat before. “Are you looking forward to touring?” There’s an edge to the question – this is perhaps the closest that Derek has ever gotten to needling for information. The question isn’t actually about the tour. Stiles knows it isn’t. 

Derek seems to be the only person around who Stiles can be even semi-honest with, so Stiles says, “I am dreading it. I have been for months.” 

“You cried,” Derek reminds him gently, and Stiles nods. He certainly did cry. Everyone saw it. “You wanna talk about it?” 

“No,” he shakes his head, another rueful smile on his face. “No, I just …” he sits down on the bed next to Derek and heaves out a great big sigh. “I just don’t want to go. I can’t say that, or I’m not allowed to, but … I don’t want to go.” 

“Well,” Derek starts, then doesn’t say anything else about that. What’s he supposed to say? “You’re really going to like Vancouver.” 

Truthfully, Stiles cannot wait to be there. He’s going to Boston and Philadelphia and Charleston and Atlanta and Orlando, and he doesn’t give a shit about any of that. He doesn’t care about any of those places, they’re all just stages he’s being put on before getting back on this stupid fucking bus. 

He wants to go to Vancouver with Derek, right now. It’s not right, and it isn’t okay for Stiles to think this, but he thinks it all the same - he’s going to miss Derek. He doesn’t want to say it out loud because it will give Derek the wrong idea, but it’s true, nonetheless. 

Stiles leans in and kisses him, just once. A quick kiss that’s not leading up to anything. It’s as close as he’ll get to ever telling Derek what he’s thinking. When he opens his eyes, there’s someone reflected in the mirror, standing in the doorway to his room. 

Stiles jumps with a start, turning around to see Lydia hovering there with no expression on her face. “Does anyone ever fucking knock anymore?” He bursts out angrily, while Derek just sits there, confused. 

Lydia walks into the room and smiles – not a real smile. A sort of irritated smile that speaks of how tired she might be. “I need to talk to you,” she starts, shooting a pointed look in Derek’s direction. 

“Okay,” Stiles sighs, rubbing his hands up and down his face. “Derek, this is my manager Lydia Martin.” 

“We don’t really need to meet,” she says to him before Derek can say anything else. That’s a loaded statement, with many different ways it could be taken, but frankly, Stiles doesn’t really give a shit what she means by that. He just sighs, again, and gives Derek an apologetic smile. 

“Ah, I kinda gotta…” 

“Sure,” he says, and he stands, while Stiles stay put. They look at each other, both of them knowing they’re not going to see one another for weeks on end, and maybe they should hug or kiss or say something to one another – but the whole friends with benefits thing doesn’t leave room for even those simple romantic pleasantries. They are, after all, just friends. “I’ll see you in a few weeks.” 

“Six weeks,” Stiles corrects. He had already started mentally counting down the days until Vancouver. 

“All right. I’ll see you in six weeks.” He glances at Lydia. Who is just standing there staring at the two of them like she has a right to watch every single part of Stiles’ life, or something. “Just - don’t be too sad, okay?” 

Stiles blinks at him, frowning. Don’t be too sad, he repeats in his head. Is that how Derek sees him? Sad? 

He wants to get up and give Derek another hug, like how they hugged when Stiles got off stage, but Lydia is watching and Stiles isn’t sure how Derek would take it, so he just smiles this big fake smile and waves him off. “I’ll see you soon,” he says, and Derek goes. Turns around and heads out the room through the bus and off of it, gone. Stiles will live to regret not hugging Derek goodbye in the coming days, but for now, he turns his attention onto Lydia. 

“What is it?” He asks, no shortness of venom in his tone. “You want to yell at me about how bad the show was?” 

“No, actually. It went better than I expected,” she leans up against Stiles’ dresser and folds her arms over her chest. 

Stiles snorts and rolls his eyes. “I was miserable and everyone could –“ 

“That’s what you don’t get,” she interrupts him, “people really enjoy watching others suffer, especially those on a pedestal.” 

“Not like that.” 

She nods. “Yes like that. You’ve been a drunken buffoon at every event leading up to this tour. It’s half the reason the tickets have sold out. Did you think everyone expected you’d suddenly start behaving normally?” 

Stiles grits his teeth and looks away. He wants to scream at her that the fact that he’s like this is not a fucking selling point, it’s not fun for him, he doesn’t care if the tour is sold out or not. He can’t help being thisway. He cannot help it. It’s not a fucking joke. But he’s had that argument with her before, and it never goes anywhere; so he stays quiet. 

“You weren’t drunk and you played the songs. What more can I ask for, at this point?” 

“Is there a point to this?” He throws his arms out and huffs. “Or are you just kicking me while I’m down?” 

“I was paying you a compliment, but sure,” she snaps, and then she levels him with a very serious gaze. “I got another one of those e-mails from your father.” 

Stiles freezes. 

“I didn’t want to tell you before tonight because I thought it would add fuel to the flame,” she’s holding her phone in her hand, and Stiles wonders if she brought it so she could read him the e-mail. “I’m not sure where we stand on him, but he says you haven’t spoken to him in… some time.” 

Some time. Yes, it’s been a long time, that Stiles has been hiding from his father. 

“You want to read it?” 

“No,” he says, shaking his head resolutely. 

She blinks at him. “You want me to read it to you?” 

“No. Just – what’s the gist?” 

“The gist is he’s under the impression some great tragedy has occurred,” she is studying him as she speaks, watching for his reactions. “He seems to think some event has transpired that has led to you not speaking to him and becoming, as he put it, a walking shitshow.” A walking shitshow. Stiles can hear his dad using that exact term. He can see him saying it in his head. “I wrote him back and told him that to my knowledge no such event has taken place. But he seems pretty resolute.” 

Stiles stares at the carpeting. This is why he’s been hiding. Because his dad would know. His dad knows everything. His dad has worked a hundred domestic violence cases just like Stiles’ before, and he has studied the signs, what to look for, how to spot it when it’s going on right under your nose. He knows, and he would know what was going on. Stiles cut him off when it started becoming clear that Matt hitting him was just part of his life now, when it became clear Stiles was trapped. When the feelings of shame started pooling around in his gut like tar, pulling him down deep into the depths. 

At some point, Stiles started believing he deserved it. What was he supposed to say to his dad? What was he going to do when his dad took one look at him and knew what was going on, when everyone else around him had been blind to it? What the hell was he supposed to do? 

It certainly didn’t help that Matt all but insisted he stop talking to his dad. That was the final nail in the coffin. Since then, even long after the breakup, Stiles cannot face his father. 

He would know. Stiles isn’t ready for anyone to know. Not even his own dad. 

“He’s under the impression Matt Harding has something to do with it,” she goes on, lifting a single eyebrow. “I can’t tell him that’s not true, because I don’t know.” 

Stiles is silent. 

“What are the odds of you telling me?” 

“There’s nothing to tell,” this is a lie he delivers expertly, because he’s said it a thousand times. “It’s all on the album.” 

“Huh,” she intones, narrowing her eyes at him. “So, you’re just not going to talk to him.” 

“I have nothing to say to him.” 

“You guys had a fight?” They didn’t, actually. Stiles tells people they did, but they didn’t. Stiles just….stopped talking to him. No warning whatsoever. When Stiles doesn’t answer, she grits her teeth and mutters something from between them. “You know, if something were really wrong, I could help you.” 

Stiles laughs – this mean, sarcastic laugh. “Oh, yes. You’d help me. You’d put me out there like a puppet and have me putting on a show for everyone to get a front row seat to my trauma.” 

“Trauma,” she repeats, blinking, and Stiles looks away and waves his hand. 

“Or whatever.” 

She sighs through her nose, and looks away. Out the window. Outside, New York is loud, incredibly loud, but in here, it’s so quiet you could hear a pin drop. “We’re in Boston tomorrow,” is what she chooses to say. Really, that’s all there is to say, anymore.

**

Stiles figured they would be sympathetic to his case in Boston – after all, no one hates the New York Yankees more than Boston. Plenty of people hate them, but the dark cloud of deep, true, total hatred hovers and hovers over the entire city. They put framed pictures of Alex Rodriguez getting punched in the fucking face in sports bars, for Christ’s sake. So, yes, he had known beyond any shadow of a doubt he, as a person who has apparently been spreading vitriol for one of the more notable players on the Yankees, would arrive to Boston and be met with open arms.

He had not expected it to this big of a fucking deal, though. 

On the day he comes in, there’s a viral video of a group of his fans burning a Harding jersey in their backyard, while Nausea plays at full blast in the background. It’s like a fucking burning effigy for Christ’s sake; it goes around and around on the internet, and is making big enough waves that it gets sent to him by Erica via twitter. He sits there in his bus watching it, hand over his mouth, because it’s insane. They went out, spent money on an official Yankees jersey (those things are not cheap, Stiles would know), just to start a bonfire in their yard and burn it while drinking white claws. 

He has this thought that he should discourage this kind of behavior. He should really say something. But then he laughs. It’s nuts, but he laughs at it. Without thinking twice about it, he likes the tweet. 

This, also, is a huge deal. People lurk his likes like a religion, and the second he likes it, everyone knows about it. It sits there in his likes, immortalized, and everyone goes apeshit over it. At soundcheck, he checks his twitter for fun, for the first time in a very good long while. His notifications are loaded with people going nuts at him, and he laughs at that, too. It’s been a long time since social media has made him feel anything aside from existential dread. 

“You know,” Erica says to him, looking over his shoulder, “I’ve long been of the opinion that actively shitting on him is a better option than whining about him.” 

Stiles glances at her. It’s the first non-abrasive thing she’s said to him in a few weeks. “I shouldn’t fan the flames too much.” 

“Why not?” She shrugs. “The flames get fanned either way. If he was really that much of an asshole, he deserves it.” 

Oh, he deserves a lot of things. He deserves walking on legos for all eternity, he deserves to be served decaf coffee when he asks for regular, he deserves birds shitting on him in the outfield, he deserves to fucking lose his contract, all of it. Stiles had never once considered being the person who brings all this pain down upon him, because he…just never saw himself being that kind of a person. People think he’s vindictive, yes, but the reality is, he doesn’t have that bone in his body. 

Or, maybe he does. He liked the fucking tweet, after all. 

At the show, he makes a conscious effort to be more present. He makes the effort of looking up, at the crowd, instead of staring at his feet, and after the third song, he smiles at the crowd and makes a comment about how loud they are. Because he’s already played the first show, everyone already knows the setlist, so before he plays Nausea, they all know he’s going to be playing Nausea. He takes a pause to get a sip of water, and it affords the crowd the silence to start a billowing chant of _FUCK. THE. YANKEES_., over and over. 

Stiles swallows his water and stands there, a smirk on his face, as it gets louder and louder, because he doesn’t ask them to stop. Then, he holds his arms out like a conductor, like he’s enjoying it, and they cheer. He shouldn’t be so childish, he knows, but it’s funny. What’s the harm? 

After Nausea ends, they know he’s playing Nashville. He switches guitars, and they know, and Stiles cracks his knuckles before coming back to the microphone. He pauses, hesitating just like the night before. He had stayed up late last night focusing all his mental energy on not crying, he will not cry this time, he won’t give anyone the satisfaction of seeing him cry.

He does wind up crying, but he manages to sing at least half the song this time, so there’s progress. 

They go to Philadelphia, Washington DC, Charleston, Atlanta. Being rootless and on the road used to be something that thrilled Stiles to no end, especially when he was first getting started. It was a dream of his to see the world, even if it was across the United States, so the first couple of tours were really something, to him. He enjoyed seeing new places and meeting people and falling asleep somewhere else every night. 

This time around, Stiles finds himself getting more and more miserable. He drinks every night just to help him fall asleep, shows up to soundcheck hungover, unhappy, frowning in his sunglasses at everyone. The shows start to all feel the exact same, like he’s trapped in Groundhog Day, locked into the same bullshit over and over and over. 

There’s nothing he can do about being on tour. He’s contractually obligated to be on this fucking tour, so he has no choice, none whatsoever. That’s fine. Or, it isn’t, not really, but he’s long past the point of wishing to change things that will not be changed, no matter what he does. They want him to tour, he will tour. 

He just wishes he had someone to talk to. Really talk to. He knows that if he reached out to Scott and had a real conversation with him, everything would be fine, but the issue is, he can’t have a real conversation with Scott. There’s a wall there, built up after months and months of Matt slowly chipping away at that friendship until there was little to nothing left. Erica is much the same, though she’s always been prickly to him even when they got along better. 

Lydia is…another story altogether. No friend, that is for certain. 

Most of all, more than anything else, even though he’s not allowed to think it, he misses Derek. Maybe he just misses what Derek represents to him, or maybe he just misses the sex, or maybe he just misses the way that Derek seems to be the only living person left alive who can actually make Stiles laugh. He hates that he feels that way, because he’s banned himself from feeling that way, but there’s not much he can do about it. 

He thinks about Derek every night when he plays Sea Monster. It breathes a little bit of life into the song, at least – where with the rest of the set, he plays sort of detached even when he tries his level best to appear interested, Sea Monster he can play with a smile on his face. 

In New Orleans, he goes straight to his bed after the show and rents Dead By Sunrise. He has never in his life had any interest in these films or even this particular genre of films, but he can’t help himself. He gets into his pajamas and sits in the dark as the bus bumbles along down the interstate, eating twizzlers – when Derek comes on screen, he laughs. It’s silly to see him play this really hardened tough guy type, who carries guns around and kicks down doors and has sex with random women in all the cities he goes to. There are lots of shots of him with his shirt off, even ones that in real life would require a shirt, but it doesn’t matter. It’s entertaining. 

At the moment in the film when Derek cocks his gun and says, “if we don’t stop these zombies from getting in, we’ll all be…dead by sunrise,” Stiles loses his mind, laughing so hard he cries. It’s so, so stupid, but it wouldn’t be nearly as funny if it weren’t Derek Hale. Of all people on earth, Derek Hale, who eats his god damn tacos with a fork and doesn’t know how to work his Ninja blender. 

For the first time since he started tour, Stiles picks up his phone and calls Derek with the movie on pause, leaving on-screen Derek frozen mid-punch. 

Derek picks up on the second ring.

“Guess what I’m sitting here watching,” he says, in lieu of a greeting. 

“I cannot imagine.”

“Dead By Sunrise, my friend.”

“Oh, Christ,” Stiles can practically see Derek palming his face. “No, you’re not.”

“Oh, I am. And it is better than any film I’ve ever seen before.”

“Jesus Christ…”

“I’m wondering to myself where are the Oscar nominations? Where are the Golden Globes? This is a tour de force of cinematography, choreography, all that.”

“You know, I did my own stunts in that one. I really did deserve an Oscar. They nearly killed me about five times.”

“You really were almost dead by sunrise,” he shakes his head, and he pretends that the Derek on screen is real Derek, like he’s here in this room, so he’s looking into his eyes. “This shit has layers. The part with the zombies in the grocery store, when you use a can of beans to beat their brains out…that was legendary.” 

Derek laughs. His laugh is distant and tinny on the phone, nothing like how it would be in person, and that makes a pang go through Stiles’ gut. He wishes Derek were here. “How are you doing, otherwise? I saw the video of you basking in the glow of that fuck the Yankees chant in Boston.” 

“Basking in the glow, indeed. They love me out there. Uh, I’m all right. Tired. Have you started filming yet?”

“Yes. I don’t even have to kill any zombies in this one, can you believe it?”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s based on a book,” he’s being evasive again, which Stiles doesn’t get; what’s the big secret? Or is he really just that humble? 

“Ooh, what book? I read books. Maybe I’ve read it.” 

“You definitely have,” he pauses, again. Then, he says, “it’s Quiet Houses.”

Stiles blinks out across the room. He looks at Derek on the television screen again, opening and closing his mouth a couple of times. “That’s my favorite fucking book.” 

“I know,” he admits, and he sounds embarrassed by it. “Look, I don’t want you to think this is some weird, creepy thing I’m doing. Which is why I hadn’t told you. They specifically sought me out and wanted me to read for the part.” 

“I’ve read that book like a thousand times.”

“Trust me, I know that.”

Stiles leans back into his pillows and blinks some more. He had barely known they were optioning that for a movie; he had heard about it, sort of distantly, but he didn’t know a studio had picked it up, he didn’t know it already had a cast, and he certainly did not know that cast had Derek Hale in the leading role. Though, it makes sense. Derek definitely makes sense for that part. 

“You think it’s creepy,” Derek reads Stiles’ silence the wrong way, and he sounds resigned to this reality, like he knew it, he knew Stiles would find it weird. 

“Why do you have this idea I would think you being in a movie would creep me out?”

“Well – I just thought you might think I was just doing it because you liked it, or something.”

“Oh, Derek. I am not that full of myself,” he laughs, shaking his head again. “That’s a great fucking part, dude. Wow. They’re really making that movie. You’re in it!” 

“I am,” he sounds relieved, and amused, at once. 

“They’re filming in Vancouver, too, wow that makes sense,” he rubs at his face and smiles. He really loves that book. His own copy is well loved, the binding worn down from how many times he’s read it and re-read it. Back in the day, when he was a closeted gay teen, that book was the catalyst to helping him come out. It’s a love story about two men, so of course, they probably half begged Derek to take the part. Casting an actual bisexual in an actual bisexual movie role, for once. Then he realizes he hadn’t even actually asked which part Derek was playing – he just assumed which one they would’ve cast him as. “Wait, you’re Alex, right?”

“Of course I am,” he laughs. “Ah…Josh Perry is opposite me.”

“Oh,” this also surprises Stiles. “The guy who told you that you would like me.” 

“…yeah.” 

“Um,” Stiles rubs the back of his neck. He wonders if this is information that Derek necessarily needs to know, considering they’re definitely not dating or anything, but all the same, he feels compelled to say it. “You know I slept with that guy, right? Like, you didn’t mention it when you first brought his name up, but I big time slept with him. Um. A few times.” 

Derek clears his throat, maybe just to buy himself time before he has to speak. “Yes, he told me that when we first met.” 

“Whoa. Things really do come full circle. Two guys I’ve slept with are starring in a movie based on my favorite book. Nutso.” 

“He’s sort of an asshole,” Derek says out of nowhere. 

“Uh, what happened to, he’s your good friend?” 

“I don’t think I said that,” he scoffs. 

“You did. When we first met, you said, I’m good friends with Josh Perry, he’s always spoken highly of you.” 

“I was being nice because I knew you knew him. I was good friends with him, but this whole experience has – well. He’s just sort of an asshole.” 

Stiles know Josh Perry. He’s not an asshole. He’s a bit too friendly and can over share sometimes (see: telling Derek Hale he fucked Stiles Stilinski apropos of nothing most likely), but he’s not an asshole. At all. He can read between the lines well enough, because he’s hung around enough men to see what’s really going on here. 

Derek has decided he no longer likes Josh Perry because Josh Perry has slept with Stiles. This was not a problem before Derek started sleeping with Stiles. 

Now, however, it’s a problem. Stiles sighs. He doesn’t want to touch that situation with a ten foot pole, because what the hell is he supposed to do about the fact that Derek is jealous of, like, a three night stand that Stiles had YEARS ago? 

“He’s not, you just don’t like him because he’s been with me before,” 

“That’s not true,” he immediately denies it. “We’re not - that’s not true.” 

Stiles rolls his eyes up to the ceiling. “Is this, like, causing an issue on set?” 

“No, holy shit, I just – all right fine. It bothers me he’s slept with you. It fucking bothers me. I know you’re not my boyfriend or anything but it just gets on my nerves sometimes that he…” 

Stiles has to commend Derek’s honesty. In testament to this, he decides to say, “if it makes you feel any better, he bored me.” 

Derek sounds embarrassed and a little cowed. “It does. Look, I know you’re not, like, mine to be jealous about. I’m a man, I can’t help it, sometimes.” 

Yes, Derek is definitely a man. There’s a lot about him that’s very stereotypically masculine, which is a huge part of his appeal anyway, so of course he can’t help but get agitated by the presence of a guy who’s fucked the person he’s currently fucking. 

“He’s not an asshole, you’re right.” 

“I usually am,” Stiles agrees. “So you won’t punch him the face next time you see him?” 

“I won’t.” 

“You guys are going to, like, kiss and stuff huh?” 

Derek laughs. “Yes, but we’re professionals. It’s just part of the job.” 

“See, actors always say shit like that, but it doesn’t make it any less weird to me.” 

“Well, if it makes you feel better, I’d much rather be kissing you.”

This is one of those things Stiles should not allow. It’s one of those things that’s not okay to say, within the parameters of what their “relationship” actually is. Stiles is flattered by it though, and he likes it, so he allows it without comment. “I’m really excited to come to your place in Vancouver. It’s, like, the only thing getting me through the tour.” 

“I’m excited to see you.”

Stiles blushes. Derek is too nice to him, and Stiles really doesn’t deserve it. 

They hang up after bidding each other a good night, and then Stiles is alone in his bed again, on the road, thousands of miles away from Derek. Sometimes it feels like he’s thousands of miles away from anyone, even when he’s up on stage surrounded by people who love him. 

He starts the movie up and turns the volume down, so Derek’s voice is distant in the background. He curls up with a pillow and hugs it against himself, falling asleep to Derek killing zombies and saving the world. It’s the best sleep he’s gotten since tour started.

**

There’s a Yankees at Red Sox game at Fenway park about a month into the tour. It’s a mere three weeks after Stiles had laughed at the burning Harding jersey and been welcomed there with open arms – Matt Harding, however, seems to be enemy number one, as far as the locals are concerned.

They viciously boo him every time he steps up to the plate. Stiles shouldn’t watch the videos, but he can’t help himself; he hasn’t really seen Matt aside from candid paparazzi pictures in… Jesus, it’s been a year and a half, at this point. It’s weird to see him there in full color, moving, weird to see him as a real person and not just some nightmare figure Stiles desperately tries to forget about. 

The booing goes on, while Matt stands there, in uniform, bat in hand, glowering. He strikes out, one, two, three, just like that. As he’s walking off the mound, he throws his bat so hard against the ground that it snaps in half. 

Stiles flinches, on instinct. He’s been on the receiving end of Matt’s irrational anger so many times, that to see it again ignites his fear response instantaneously. 

Just as he’s closing out of YouTube, he gets a text notification from Erica. It says, _uh, you better go look at Matt’s Twitter, dude_. 

Stiles hesitates. He doesn’t even follow the guy anymore, of course not, so he has to search for his name to even remember what his account name is. He pulls it up, reads the first couple of tweets, and the blood drains out of his face. He’s having a fucking breakdown on Twitter, in front of the entire world. 

Stiles scrolls to get to the start of it, timed only ten minutes ago. As he does so, it says new tweets are available. Jesus, he’s still going. To Stiles’ surprise, the beginning of this rant is Matt quoting someone who @‘d him with a link to the video that Stiles just watched – the original tweet is definitely from one of Stiles’ fans, he can tell from the handle alone, and it reads : _having a bad day there, bud?_

Stiles can imagine that this enraged Matt to the point of shaking. It’s no wonder he couldn’t help himself but to respond. 

@hardingofficial : lots of bad days, actually, your idol is to blame for that.   
@hardingofficial : have no clue what I ever did to deserve this vitriol day in and day out, but it’s nice to see Stiles fucking egging you all on. Typical him   
@hardingofficial : i wasn’t even the one who did anything wrong, in spite of what he wrote about on his fucking album. He cut me out of his life not the other way around   
@hardingoffical : now everyone treats me like I murdered his puppy, or something. Fuck off   
@hardingofficial : I’m not surprised, this is just what stiles does. He has no material if he’s not tearing his ex-boyfriend to pieces. He has no real talent. He’s just a shitty person.   
@hardingofficial : he makes his money off of shitting on other people. He’s a reeaaalll class act. Yet I’m the asshole?? Because I can show up to work without being shitfaced?   
@hardingofficial : I hate to burst your bubble but he’s an alcoholic megalomaniac, a talentless hack, and a fucking bully. 

Stiles puts his phone down. All those tweets will be deleted within the hour, he knows it, so he should probably just let it go and forget about it. The man is having a fucking attack, or something. He can’t stand it when people don’t think he’s the greatest person alive, so being boo’d at Fenway was the final fucking straw. He took to, of all places, Twitter, to air out his grievances in the worst possible way. 

He’s going to act like Stiles ever did anything to him, except love him and put up with his bullshit. Except allow himself to be Matt’s punching bag for two straight years. Stiles went through fucking hell for that guy, a living hell, and this is what Stiles gets? All because Stiles wrote about how sad and shitty of a person he is now because of what Matt did to him? 

He bursts out of his bedroom and goes straight for the liquor cabinet in the main part of the bus. Boyd is there doing a crossword puzzle on the couch. He looks up, sees Stiles pulling the tequila down with a shot glass, and frowns. 

Stiles takes one shot, and slams the empty glass down on the counter. He glares at the empty sink, the microwave, his stupid fucking tour bus. How dare Matt get up there and tell the entire world Stiles is a bully. How dare he do that. What is wrong with him? He’s fucking sick in the head, he’s mentally ill, there’s something wrong with his fucking brain. 

Stiles takes another shot. Boyd sighs from the couch, folding up the newspaper and setting it down beside him. He says, “let’s just calm down.” 

“He’s such a fucking sociopath,” he spits between grit teeth. He forgoes the glass and takes a shot right out of the bottle, swigging it back and then wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I can’t believe he could – I can’t believe he would have the balls to – just anything to discredit me!” 

Boyd sighs, again. He rubs his eyes, shakes his head, then just sits there, not saying anything. Stiles takes another huge glug from the bottle, fumbling a bit when the bus goes over a particular good sized bump. 

“That’s all this is. He’s making me look like a liar and a – and a liar. He’s making me look untrustworthy, so if I ever…” he trails off. Boyd is looking at him, silent and still. Stiles looks away, at the ground, at the bottle in his hand. Matt was right about some things, he guesses. “No one would ever believe me, and he’ll make sure of it. He’s just letting me know. That’s all it is.” 

Stiles sits down on the couch. He puts the lid back on the bottle and sets it aside. He sniffles. “He’s just making sure I know that.” 

“Stiles,” Boyd starts, and then he likely has no fucking clue what to say, because he says nothing. Stiles cries, big heaving sobs, because what else is he supposed to do? They’ll never believe him. Matt is this beloved icon, and Stiles is exactly what Matt says he is – a talentless, alcoholic, piece of garbage. Who would ever believe him? He has lost all credibility. 

Boyd slides across the couch and puts his hand on Stiles’ back, rubbing slow, soothing circles. “Well, I believe you. I believe you, Stiles.” 

Stiles cries into his hands. He cries and cries and cries, with no end in sight, while Boyd sits there with him, not saying anything. His presence, just him existing at all, has become a real source of comfort to Stiles, ever since all those things happened to him. It’s just nice that he’s there. He doesn’t really need to say anything. 

All the same, he finds himself wishing that Derek were here.


	4. Vancouver

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am aware this fic keeps getting longer. I am aware every time I update it I make the total chapter count bigger. It’s because every time I think I get a grip on how long it’s going to be, I am WRONG!!! There is...a lot to unpack in this one. Lmfao. I haven’t even gotten to half the things I wanted to get to yet. 
> 
> It is very strange to write a Derek who didn’t have a horrible life and so isn’t, you know...the way that he typically is. It’s hard to make him not super fucked up but still keep his character true to form. He still has the harder edges to his personality, like you guys want him to in the comments, it’s just that Stiles doesn’t typically see them. Or, he hasn’t seen them yet.

These events all had the capability of sending Stiles down a very, very dark path. A path he has been down before, more than once, ever since he met Matt Harding. He knows that he could start drinking more, showing up wasted to the shows, staggering out drunk and fumbling his way through all of the songs. He knows that he could just give up entirely on putting on even a halfway decent show. He could refuse to play Nashville, storm off stage every night and not go back out until they told him he didn’t have to play it. He could and would do all of these things. 

Misery is a comfortable place to be. Allowing himself to sink deep, deep, deeper, into the pit is always easier than trying. But Stiles knows that people rely on him. His friends, his band, they trust him to try. They need him to try. The fans all need him to try, because they look up to him and think he’s so smart and so great, even when he knows he’s none of those things. 

Every day, Stiles gets up and goes to sound check and resists the urge to spend the entire day drunk. He eats with the band and he may be sullen and quiet, but he’s there, not at a bar wiling his time away until he has to go on stage. He performs the shows. He tries. He tries his absolute hardest every single day, and he knows that to everyone else it seems like he’s barely trying at all – but he is. A lot. He won’t let Matt turn him into exactly what Matt wants him to turn into. He won’t do it. He let Matt turn him into someone else for years, and it stops here. 

He watches all the Dead By Sunrise movies because they’re fun and funny and he likes seeing Derek. He falls asleep every night with Derek’s voice in the background, and he tells himself he’s not getting too attached. He’s not allowed to get attached. He can’t be attached to anyone – look at him. Is this a healthy, mentally sound person who could handle being in a relationship? He thinks not getting blackout drunk every single night is progress. 

Once he finishes the series, he looks up what other movies Derek has been in, and watches those. Some are bad. Like, really bad. Some are actually pretty decent. He’s been in more movies than Stiles had realized. Even though Stiles doesn’t really have much to say, he texts Derek every single day. He tells Derek that Houston is a really cool place, he tells Derek what he had for breakfast or lunch, he tells Derek about how someone threw a Kit Kat bar up on stage at him and even though the whole band said it was probably poisoned, he ate it anyway, and he’s still alive. 

By the time his break comes, he’s this exhausted, worn out, shell of a human being. This is only just the start of the tour, it’s only been a month and a half, but he feels like he’s been out there for years, on the road. Drinking and crying himself to sleep and crying to Nashville and wondering when he’s going to stop feeling anything at all. 

It is so hard to get up and try to be better. No one pats him on the back or congratulates him for making it this far, because as far as they’re concerned, this is just his job. He congratulates himself, in the mirror on the morning of the last show of the first leg, brushing his teeth. There was not a single show where he staggered out drunk or made an asshole out of himself. Good on him. 

At Vancouver International Airport, when Stiles steps off the plane, he feels like he wants to get down on his knees and kiss the tarmac like the Pope arriving to Rome. He has thought about virtually nothing else but getting here, but getting through the first leg, of coming to see Derek, since the first fucking night. 

Stiles had expected that Derek would just send a car to come pick him up, with a driver or something, that would stand there with a sign that had his last name on it. 

Instead, Stiles leaves baggage claim and finds Derek standing there like a regular person, hands in his pockets. He’s got on jeans and a t-shirt, sunglasses tucked into the collar, but for the sight of him standing there, he may as well be wearing the Medal of Honor, or something. Stiles is so relieved to see him he could cry. He had crawled his way to this point, for all intents and purposes. 

But he decides it would freak Derek out if he burst into hysterical tears in the airport, so he doesn’t do that. He thumps his bags down on the ground and envelopes him in a great big hug, tight, hard, long. It’s exactly the way he spent every night wishing he would’ve hugged Derek before he stepped off the tour bus that night in New York. 

“Oh, man,” Stiles says into Derek’s shoulder, holding on, refusing to let go. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited to be here.” 

Derek hugs him back. “Six weeks,” Derek tells him, and Stiles can hear the smile in his voice. 

“Six years. Six years in the desert,” he corrects. He finally pulls away, sighing through his nose, looking Derek right in the face. He looks the same as always. Though, he’s got more stubble than usual, which Stiles figures is the look they want him to have for the movie. “I cannot believe I made it. I thought tour was going to kill me.” 

Derek gives him an incredulous smile. “You’re a seasoned professional,” he corrects, as though maybe Stiles is just being dramatic. He is not being dramatic. Boyd materializes behind them like a silent statue, frowning, his own bag in his hand. Derek spots him and seems perplexed, as though he figured Stiles would be arriving alone. 

“Oh, I uh – I sort of don’t go anywhere without him. I hope that’s all right. I’ve got him in the nicest hotel in town, it’s just for when I go out by myself.” 

Derek waves his hand like it’s no problem whatsoever, then he reaches out and offers that same hand to Boyd. They shake. “Good to see you, man.” 

Boyd nods at him, but otherwise stays silent. Stiles wonders what Boyd thinks of him – he never really offers his opinion on the men Stiles goes around with, or his opinion on much of anything. But he surely has one. He wonders if he thinks Derek is this great big asshole, like what Scott thinks.

Stiles digs in his backpack for the information on the car he set Boyd up with, hands it to him, and tells him to go have fun and do cool stuff, whatever he wants to do. Boyd claps Stiles on the back with a big hand in goodbye, and then he’s gone, vanishing to find the car rental place. 

“I hope that’s not weird,” Stiles says to Derek again. “I uh – I can’t go anywhere without him.” 

“They don’t let you out alone?” He bends down and picks up Stiles’ duffel bag, which is an absurdly nice gesture for Stiles, so he smiles. 

“No, they would let me out alone, depending on the day. It’s more…my paranoia.” 

He would’ve thought that Derek would understand the incessant anxiety that comes along with being instantly recognizable. But then he looks around and he notes Derek has no security. It’s just him, alone, in the middle of the Vancouver airport like it’s no big deal. Likely in the time he’s spent just standing here waiting for Stiles to arrive, he’s been spoken to and asked for pictures, and Stiles imagines that he obliged and smiled and was nice to them all, because that’s just how he is. 

They leave the airport, and again, Stiles expects a nice car with a driver. There’s a nice car, all right, parked in the garage on the second level, but there’s no driver. Derek gets into the driver’s side after putting Stiles’ bags in the back seat for him. 

In the passenger seat, Stiles feels bizarre. He’s so used to being carted around like cargo in the back of a big armored car, it’s almost alien nature for him to be up front like this. 

“So, how was it?” 

“The flight? Fine. No crying babies.” 

“The tour,” Derek corrects with a smile. He’s got his sunglasses on, so he doesn’t squint against the bright mid-day sun when they pull out onto the main road, away from the airport. 

“Oh,” Stiles isn’t sure how to answer that. “Nightmare might be too strong of a word. It was more of an uphill battle, let’s put it that way.” 

“You’re doing the West Coast next, right?” 

Stiles sort of doesn’t want to talk about this, but he doesn’t want to be rude to Derek, so he nods his head and stares out the window at the passing city. “I do a month of West Coast, yeah. They’re already selling tickets to the second leg but I haven’t even looked at the dates yet.” 

“I would’ve thought you personally planned the tour, for some reason.” 

Stiles laughs at that. Boy, what a thought. “Oh, fuck no. They wouldn’t even let me in the room for that conversation. They tell me where to go and I go.” 

Derek has nothing to say back to that. He drives on, while Stiles gets some good long looks at Vancouver. It’s a really cool place. He’s never seen it in the day time before – he thinks the last time he played a show here, he stayed on the bus until it was time for him to come out and make an appearance, and then got right back on it to make it to their next city. 

Derek’s house is on a street called Rivershore, appropriately named, because there’s the body of water itself right there, at the back of his house, with a little beach. It’s not totally secluded in the woods like Stiles had been initially imagining, but it’s got privacy fences and security gates and big trees and shrubs so the neighbors won’t be able to see them. 

Stiles steps outside onto the driveway and it is quiet, almost deathly quiet, like Derek had said it would be. He can hear the water moving, but not much else, so he drinks in the silence and breathes out a sigh of relief. He feels guilty saying this, because they give him the life he has, but he gets so fucking tired of getting screamed at every night. 

The house itself is big, because of course it is, and it’s got that whole mountain house vibe to it – like all those mansions up in Washington and Montana always do. It looks precisely like the kind of house Derek would live in, with big windows and muted colors, lots of green plants, kept pristine by a team of people, most likely. 

Derek carries Stiles’ bags for him again, so when they come into the living room, Stiles has his hands free to stop dead in his tracks when he makes eye contact with another living creature. 

“Uh, hello,” he says, and the dog wags its tail back at him, but remains sitting on the couch just staring, like he’s still wary of this stranger. “You know there’s a great big dog in here?” 

“I do know that,” Derek says, a smile in his voice. He sets Stiles’ bags down beside the couch, and then he makes gestures at the dog, who perks its ears up and barks. It is a loud bark. “Come say hi.” 

The dog leaps off the couch and runs right at Stiles, all huge and fluffy, so Stiles braces himself and flinches a bit. 

“Whoa, he won’t bite you,” Derek says, laughing. In testament to this, the dog licks Stiles’ hand in greeting instead of jumping on top of him like Stiles had honestly expected it to. 

It’s a big fucking dog. It’s a great, big, Siberian Husky, so its size is at least partly due to fluff, but it’s still… big. It’s gotta be mixed with something else, some other huge breed of dog Stiles doesn’t have a name for. It’s fucking giant. 

Stiles pats it on the head. 

“I get the idea you’re not a dog person.” 

“I’m not _not_ a dog person. I’ve just never had a dog,” it sits there staring at him, wagging its tail. “I begged my dad for one as a kid, but he’s _really_ not a dog person. What’s its name?” 

“I’ll tell you, but you’re not allowed to laugh.” 

“Just from that alone I know I’m gonna laugh.” 

Derek sighs and says, “it’s Snowball.” 

Stiles looks at the dog, then looks at Derek to make sure he’s serious. “Snowball.” 

“Yes.” 

“I would think Derek Hale’s dog’s name would be something like, Punch, or Fist.” 

“Holy shit,” Derek laughs. 

“Not…Snowball.” Stiles guesses it does look like a Snowball, but that’s something a teenage girl names her Pomeranian, not what a grown man names his gigantic husky.

“My ex-fiancée named him,” he says by way of explanation, while the dog stands right next to Stiles, sniffing at his hand. 

“Is this the same woman who put the giant sex mirror in your Tribeca place?”

“One and the same.” 

Stiles thinks for a moment. Snowball licks his hand again, so Stiles scratches behind his ears and pats him some more. Stiles remembers that Derek Hale had been engaged, for a while, but he sort of thought that whole thing was a ploy for publicity to get people to go see the last Dead By Sunrise movie. He didn’t think Derek Hale was actually engaged to a woman who helped him decorate his apartment and who he shared a dog with. 

“Who was that again? Your ex.” 

Derek busies himself with sending Snowball away, snapping his fingers and pointing so he leaves Stiles alone and heads back to his spot on the couch. He stands right in front of Stiles when he says, “Jennifer Blake.” 

It sounds like it should be the name of a porn star, but it’s not. Stiles recognizes the name. She’s been in a few big movies. She’s not nearly the mega star that Derek is, but she’s definitely not nobody. 

“She’s the most odious person alive,” Derek says, a wry smile on his face. “She named the dog Snowball, for Christ’s sake.” 

“Couldn’t you just rename him Fist, if you wanted to?” 

“I’m not going to mess with his head,” he waves his hand like it really doesn’t matter. “He’s enough of a gigantic idiot, I won’t make him think he doesn’t even know his own name, too.” 

Stiles looks at Snowball, again. He does sort of look like a humongous idiot, sitting there with his tongue lolling out, wagging his tail. “How come you guys didn’t actually do it? Get married and all.” He’s prying. He can hear himself being nosy, but he can’t help that he really wants to know. Derek clearly had at some point been planning to spend his life with her – he designed an apartment and got a dog with this woman. Men don’t get dogs with women they aren’t fully intending to marry. 

“We just weren’t on the same page,” he shrugs. “She wanted me to impregnate her like, right away. I wanted to keep working and traveling and – you know. It got so bad I thought she’d poke holes in the condoms, man.” 

“Yikes,” she sounds fucking nuts, but Stiles doesn’t want to be rude, so he doesn’t say that. He is, after all, standing in a house this woman likely used to partially own. “Do you guys share custody of him?” 

“No, no. No way. I just feel guilty having him in the city where he’s cooped up inside all the time,” he reaches out and gives Snowball some pats, “he stays with my mother whenever I can’t be around. Anyway,” Derek shakes his head, as if shaking all those thoughts away altogether. “You look exhausted, Stiles.” 

“I am,” he agrees. “Ah… is it okay if I nap?” 

Derek laughs, like he thinks that’s hilarious. “You can do whatever you want, Stiles, it’s your break,” and sometimes when he says Stiles’ name like that, he’s saying it like he wishes he were calling him something else. It’s in the tone of it. Stiles never figured Derek Hale for a pet name person, but he can just…hear it. “I’ve got plans for dinner, the rest of the day is yours.” 

“Where should I …?” He gestures to his bags.

“Well,” Derek starts. Then he hesitates, for just a moment, before clearing his throat and going in for the kill. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be okay sleeping with me.” 

“Oh,” Stiles’ eyebrows go up, before he can stop himself. 

“If you don’t want to, it’s fine.” 

“No, it’s –“ he looks at the ground, his face feeling hot. He’s just thinking about how half of his nights on tour were spent cradling a pillow and falling asleep to Derek’s voice, and he’s embarrassed of it, as if Derek will somehow know anything about that. “I’ll sleep with you. I’ll sleep in your bed, it’s cool.” 

“I’ve got spare rooms.” 

“No, with you,” he says, awkward. He feels awkward. This is awkward. It should not be this awkward. “I will sleep with you.” 

Derek smiles at him. Stiles had missed, more than anything else, Derek’s smile. 

Derek takes him upstairs to the master bedroom, and it’s huge. The bed is gigantic, the view unbelievable, his closet mammoth and huge. It’s a bit lived in, with Derek’s things strewn about, his shoes on the floor, his personal affects on the bed side table, but otherwise, the bed is made and filled with so many pillows that it looks like something out of Stiles’ wet dreams. 

He leaves Stiles alone, so Stiles draws the curtains closed and takes his shoes off, diving head first into the bed. It smells like Derek. Like, a lot like him. The pillows, the sheets, all of it. He wants to live in this fucking bed. 

It amazes him that he knocks out without having to take a couple of shots first to help him – but he does. He’s fast asleep in minutes, sprawled out and snoring right on top of the covers. 

When he wakes up, he’s discombobulated. There’s someone rubbing a hand up and down his back, which is weird, because Boyd does not usually gently coax him awake. He bursts into the room and starts banging a pan with a wooden spoon, most mornings. 

Then he remembers. He’s not on the tour bus. He’s not on tour right now at all. He’s in Vancouver. He’s in Derek’s bed. This is Derek, touching him gently. 

“You really were tired,” Derek is saying to him, while Stiles blearily rights himself, rubbing at his eyes, clicking his tongue a couple times. He can still taste airplane peanuts. “You’ve been asleep for hours.” 

“What’s the time?” He asks, his voice raspy. He notes that it is pitch black outside the window, but when he had fallen asleep, the sun was high in the sky. 

“About midnight.” 

That wakes Stiles right up. He sits up all the way, so Derek has to lean back a bit to make room for him. “You let me sleep for ten hours?” 

“You were out,” he shrugs. “I figured you needed to rest.” 

“I thought you said you had dinner plans,” he wipes the sleep from his eyes, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. Honestly, it is really hard to convince himself to get up. This is the most comfortable bed he’s ever slept in in his entire life. 

“I still do, if you’re hungry.” 

“Where are we going to go at midnight?” He feels bad. He passed out asleep and ruined Derek’s entire night. 

Derek shrugs, like it’s no big deal. “Here. I’ve got a personal chef.” 

Oh, of course he fucking does, he’s Derek god damn Hale. He’s probably got an entire team of people down there even in spite of the late hour, because he’s paying them extra to be here at midnight, cooking away, just for Stiles’ enjoyment. This is just fucking absurd. And, meanwhile, Stiles is here in his wrinkled airplane clothes, teeth unbrushed, hair a nightmarish mop on top of this head. This the least alluring he’s ever been, he’s certain of it. 

“I’m gonna shower,” Stiles decides out loud. “I’m gonna shower and get dressed and I’ll be super quick.” 

“No rush,” Derek tells him. “The bathroom is right through that door,” he points behind Stiles’ head. 

Stiles groggily gets up and grabs his backpack, fishing his toiletry bag out as fast as he can, before turning on his heel and pushing the bathroom door open. “Seriously, I’m gonna be so fast.” 

“Take your time,” Derek is smiling again, as Stiles flicks on the light and closes the door behind him. 

The bathroom is nice. The shower is huge. He knows beyond any shadow of a doubt that Derek has had sex in this shower, lots and lots and lots of crazy hot sex, because it was clearly designed with that in mind. Like the sex mirror. Because Derek Hale had a woman he was going to marry and they had lots and lots of sex together in this very house. In this very room, no fucking doubt. 

He vows not to think about that as he quickly washes his hair and scrubs the airplane smell out of his skin – then he works on scrubbing the stench of the tour out of him, too, watching it all go down the drain with his soap in a slow turning cyclone. Here, there is no tour. There’s just Derek and Snowball. And the personal chef, apparently. None of these people are going to ask him to put on a show for them, or demand he behave a certain way. It’s hard to imagine, anymore. 

When Stiles emerges, he has no clue what to wear. Something casual? Something more formal? He digs around in his bags, completely naked, ripping clothes out and strewing them all over the place. Once he actually finds pants and a shirt that he deems decent enough, he has to gather up all his clothes and shove them back into the bag as tight as he can get them in. Over his dead body is he going to leave a giant mess in Derek’s bedroom. 

He dresses, scrubs at his hair a few times to get it tousled instead of just lying flat on his head. Then he leaves the bedroom. In the hall, it’s dim, but he vaguely remembers the way to get back to the stairs that will take him down to where Derek must be waiting for him. 

There are some framed pictures on the wall, most of them he barely glances at. He comes across one at the end, right before the stairs, that must be a family picture – this one, he stops and actually looks at. 

There are seven sisters, all right. They’re all tall, with dark hair just like Derek’s, and they all look alike. It’s almost… creepy. Then maybe Stiles only thinks so because he has no siblings. It’d be weirder if they didn’t look alike, right? It’s just insane to see female carbon copies of Derek, like that, all lined up in height order. 

Derek is in the living room, with the dog, sitting on the couch. Stiles is wary of Snowball still, because he’s a gargantuan creature, so he avoids him with a wide berth. Derek notices, tracking Stiles’ movements with his eyes. “You know, Snowball is as innocuous as his name would suggest.” 

“He’s huge,” Stiles argues. “He looks like a wolf.” Come to think of it, that’s precisely what Stiles suspects Snowball is mixed with – a fucking wolf. 

“You want a glass of wine?” He points to his own. It’s midnight, past in fact, and there he is, drinking white wine all casual in spite of the fact that Stiles has been asleep all god damn day. 

“Yeah,” he answers, running a hand through his damp hair. As soon as Derek gets up, Snowball is up too, trotting along after Derek towards the coffee table where the wine bottle and a second glass is sitting, waiting for Stiles, most likely. “I’m so sorry I slept that long. I didn’t think I would – well. I guess I knew how tired I was. I just figured you would wake me.” 

Derek pours the wine. Seeing as how he’s pre-occupied, Snowball sets his eyes on Stiles as his target for attention. He comes over and rubs against him, while Stiles just stands there and allows it. “He likes you,” Derek says, handing Stiles his glass. 

“He’s hairy.” 

Derek observes him some more – he watches Stiles swipe at the hair Snowball leaves behind on his pants, how Stiles only awkwardly pets him because he doesn’t know how to pet a dog, really. “You can just say you don’t like dogs. I won’t get offended.” 

“It’s not that I don’t like them, like I said, I’ve just never really been around them.” Snowball barks, loud, so Stiles jumps back and shouts in surprise, nearly spilling his wine. 

Derek laughs his ass off, as though it’s really that funny.“You’re afraid of him, holy shit.” 

“No,” he defends. Though, when Snowball tries to come closer in search of pets, Stiles ducks away and heads to the other side of the room. “He’s just – fucking huge.” 

“You’ll see he’s nothing to be afraid of, trust me. I can’t believe you’re afraid of dogs. There must have been an incident.” He sips his wine and waits, expectantly blinking at Stiles, waiting to hear this tale of the time Stiles was jumped and attacked by a huge fucking dog in his childhood. 

But, no such incident exists. Dog people always think everyone else in the world worships and loves dogs, and they need an explanation whenever they encounter someone who’s not as crazy about them. But again, Stiles has no problem with dogs. Smaller dogs. Dogs that aren’t the size of a mid-size sedan. “No incidents. Just, uh, he’s not gonna be in the bed with us is he?” 

Derek grins at him. Apparently, he finds Stiles’ apprehension about his dog somewhat endearing. “He’s not allowed in the bed, no. You wanna come sit down?” He gestures off and away, toward a room Stiles has not been in yet. 

Stiles nods. Honestly, he’s so hungry he could eat Snowball, but he won’t say that out loud. It smells like something is cooking, something unbelievably good, so Stiles happily follows behind Derek as he leads the way. 

They come into a dining room, with a big table, _huge_ table, a table for twelve at least, and there are lit candles. There’s music on in the background, and their places are already set. Stiles is again amazed that Derek is doing all this in the middle of the fucking night, but he’s also amazed because – “uh, this is romantic.” There are double glass doors that look out onto the water outside, the beach, the moon reflected off the dark waves. It’s warm in here, cozy, a soft rug underneath Stiles’ bare feet. 

“It’s not a big deal,” Derek shrugs. He gestures to the chair closest to where Stiles is standing, so Stiles takes the hint and pulls it out, sitting down and observing what’s in front of him. A napkin, silverware, a coaster for his wine glass. 

It is a big deal. Stiles feels like he’s a million bucks, right now. “You lit candles.” 

Again, Derek shrugs. “Ambiance.” 

“Yeah,” Stiles agrees. He gets this bizarre fluttery feeling in his chest, that he immediately tries to squelch down, because he shouldn’t be feeling fluttery. Fluttery is off the fucking table, absolutely not allowed. This is just a break from tour with his friend whom he happens to have sex with. Not a fucking Nora Ephron movie. 

But how can he possibly help it? No one has treated him so nicely in years. 

Derek sits across from him, so both of their faces are lit up by the candles flickering in between them, and they’re looking at one another. Stiles feels the need to bury his face in his wine glass so he won’t smile all stupid and make an ass out of himself. “You like it?” Derek is constantly asking Stiles if he likes things; if he likes the restaurant, if he likes the clothes Derek wears, if he likes this, or that, or any number of things. 

Stiles swallows. “I do, yeah, it’s, you know. I feel like I’m in a magazine ad. Like, the food network magazine,” his face feels hot. He needs to change the subject. “Uh, how’s Josh?”

Derek blinks at him across the table, which is when Stiles realizes he should not have said that. Derek had just told him not three weeks ago that he’s not crazy about the fact that Stiles slept with Josh, and now here Stiles is, asking about the guy. This is the sort of thing that would’ve landed him in serious hot water with Matt. This is the sort of thing that would’ve gotten him a black eye, for sure. As such, he immediately goes into defensive mode. “I don’t know why I said that, I don’t give a shit about Josh,” he puts his hands up in surrender, “I don’t know why I brought him up I’m just - I’m nervous, you make me nervous, so I…” 

Derek is not going to hit him. Derek isn’t even going to raise his voice. He just smiles, benign, the same way he always smiles at Stiles, like it’s no big deal. Nothing is ever a big deal to Derek. “I make you nervous,” he repeats. 

There is simply no use in denying it. “Yes. I’m not used to –“ he gestures around the room, the candles, the nice house, the nice silverware, “all this. You should tell me I’m bad at what I do and then criticize the way I hold my wine glass, then I’ll soften up real quick.”

“I really don’t like it when you say shit like that,” Derek tells him very honestly, giving Stiles a bit of a look, like Stiles is being ridiculous. Before Stiles can answer, the door that must connect to the kitchen comes swinging open, and there’s food being brought to them by an actual server. There’s a server in Derek Hale’s house at one in the morning, setting a plate of food in front of Stiles like he’s in an actual restaurant. 

“Thanks,” he says to her, and she nods her head with a smile. Then he looks at his plate. It’s something fancy in a wine sauce with mashed potatoes underneath, as far as he can tell, but he could really not care less - he’d eat his own asshole, he’s so fucking hungry. He picks up his fork and attacks it, shoving the biggest bite he can fit into his mouth in at the earliest possible second. The server hasn’t even left the room yet, and there he is, like a pig at a trough. 

“Don’t they feed you out there?” 

“No,” he answers, mouthful of food. He swallows it quickly, collecting another bite with his fork. “I mean, I feed myself.” 

There are always opportunities to stop and get food at some cool local place in all of the cities he goes to, or to at least order food in. Sometimes the band would order pizzas or Chinese takeout and he’d sit and eat with them, but most of the time, he’d make Easy Mac in his tour bus microwave and eat it alone in his bed. 

“What, hot pockets and potato chips?” Derek is eerily spot on – but he’s teasing, so Stiles just laughs and drinks his wine, eats his food. It’s nice in here. Derek looks good, really good, because Stiles has been thinking about being in the same room with him for six fucking weeks, but his imagination could never compare to the real thing, and the water is pretty, the music is nice, the candle light is sexy, the entire thing makes him feel… like he didn’t just spend all this time drinking and feeling sorry for himself. Sort of like he’s somebody else. 

Derek makes him feel that way. Like he’s not just some asshole who stumbled into a record deal and manipulates men into doing his bidding just so he can have something to write about. 

Though, it is the elephant in the room, so it’s no surprise when Derek says, “Christ, I saw that rant that Matt Harding went on.” 

Stiles puts his wine glass down. He doesn’t know what to say to that, or what a reasonable reaction would be. 

“I’ve heard that guy is an asshole, mostly hearsay, I always thought,” he’s looking right at Stiles, right at him, so Stiles works to keep his face impassive. “How did you two even meet?” 

This is a taboo subject. Derek either does not know any better, or he’s fishing. He knows beyond any shadow of a doubt that Derek has added up two and two and figured that Matt is a huge part of the reason Stiles is the way he is now. Everyone figures that. Derek just could not imagine the reality. Either way, Stiles had asked Derek all those questions about Jennifer, so he can’t exactly say he’s not going to talk about Matt, because then that’s not really fair. 

Stiles wipes his mouth with his napkin and looks down at the food on his plate. He has this thought of telling Derek the truth. Of saying that Matt beat the hell out of him every day and made his life miserable and he does not ever want to talk about him again. But it’s not an option. It is never an option to say anything about it. Matt had drilled that into his head. 

“Uh. Well. I like baseball,” _liked_ baseball. It’s like when Stiles ate an entire takeout container of broccoli beef when he had the flu and then puked it right up, so now he can never eat broccoli beef again. Matt is his sports related stomach flu. “Matt was, you know. The first guy on a baseball team that fucked other guys. I like to fuck other guys. It sort of just made sense.” 

Stiles leaves that there and then picks up his fork, going back to eating. He means for it to read as a silent “I’m done talking about this now,” but Derek does not change the subject. 

“If it made so much sense how come you guys broke up?”

These are fair questions. These are fair fucking questions. “Uh,” Stiles shakes his head, turning his attention outwards, to the water through the doors. “Well. He’s an asshole.” 

Derek is analyzing him. He knows there’s more to it than that. “You guys had a really bad breakup, is that it?” 

“Oh you can’t imagine,” Stiles laughs as though it’s funny – being choked half to death in Nashville, ha ha! Being forced to sing about it every single night, what-ho, good times! 

“He strikes me as being sort of ill tempered.” 

Stiles doesn’t know why. This is the final straw. He sets his fork down on his plate with a loud clink and he says, in a voice that doesn’t even sound like himself, “well, they say the same thing about you, don’t they?” 

They do. They say Derek Hale is a hot headed dick who thinks he’s better than other people and snaps at PA’s and yells at directors to get his way. But in spite of the fact that people say that, it is in no way shape or form something that Stiles should throw in Derek’s face like that. 

“I’m sorry,” he says only seconds later, pressing his hands over his eyes so he can’t see Derek’s reaction. “Holy shit, I’m sorry, that was such a jackass comment. You set this whole thing up and I’m just sitting here being so shitty, I’m –“ he pulls his hands off his face, to find that Derek does not look mad. He doesn’t look thrilled, no, but he’s not angry or terribly offended, either. “…I’m shit, I just. I just –“ but he can’t finish that sentence. 

Or, he could. He could say he’s traumatized and any mention of the person who caused the trauma makes him lash out like a wounded animal in a cage, because that’s what he is. He’s a beaten down dog they lock in a cage and force to perform tricks. 

He won’t say that. 

“It’s fine,” Derek tells him, because nothing bothers him, because he’s never angry at Stiles no matter what Stiles does, even when Stiles deserves it. 

“It’s not. I know you better than that, you’re not like that. You’ve been so – so nice to me. And I’m just this asshole.” 

“I’ve learned my lesson,” Derek smirks at him as he cuts into his meat, “mentioning that particular breakup isn’t a good idea.” 

No, it certainly isn’t. Stiles feels like he ruined the mood, the whole night, so he isn’t very hungry anymore. He stares at his half eaten food and he wonders if this is just who he is, now. If he’s destined to screw everything up, because he’s so fucked up, so completely screwed up, over what that jackass did to him. It is not fair. 

“He’s an asshole,” Stiles repeats, and he wants that word to be another word, the one he can’t say out loud. “He treated me like…well, you know. It’s weird to not be treated that way anymore. I don’t know how to respond. All this,” he motions to the room, the nice dinner, and Derek. “…it’s not what I’m used to.” 

Derek is looking at Stiles all perceptive again. Like he can see clean through Stiles’ bullshit, to the center of him, where all the shit he keeps locked away is waiting. “Well, it’s how you deserve to be treated.” 

Stiles laughs, because that’s a funny thought. 

“You should finish your food, Stiles,” he points to Stiles’ plate, and he’s saying Stiles’ name like a term of endearment, again. “Let’s forget I brought Matt up. He’s nothing, he’s no one, I shouldn’t have said it in the first place.” 

Well, Stiles brought up Derek’s ex and Derek didn’t have a freak out over it. It doesn’t seem fair. 

All the same, Stiles is more than willing to simply forget about it, so he nods his head and picks his fork back up, playing with the meat on his plate. “You’re really not an asshole,” Stiles feels the need to repeat. 

“Not all the time, no,” he drinks his wine and finishes the glass. “It’s crazy, but I still really want to fuck you even when you’re biting my head off.”

Stiles nearly chokes on a piece of steak – he laughs, managing at the last second to swallow his food, and throws his hand over his mouth. It’s nuts how Derek always seems to know exactly the right thing to fix the mood in any given situation. “That is crazy,” Stiles agrees. He sips his wine, and meets Derek’s eyes over the candles in the middle of the table. 

Oh, they’re going to fuck. Even in spite of that whole mess just minutes earlier, they are definitely going to fuck. 

“I’ve been watching videos of you performing,” Derek tells him. He’s reaching out to grab the wine bottle that Stiles doesn’t remember either of them bringing in here – the server must have brought it in without Stiles noticing. He pours himself another glass, while Stiles watches. The air in here is shifting, Stiles can feel it. He wonders if Derek can feel it, too. 

“You mean from this tour?” 

“Yeah,” he nods. His glass is full, so he drinks from it. Stiles doesn’t know what to make of this statement – Derek likes to watch him perform. He chews his food and swallows it, cocking his head to the side. 

“Well, I rented all your movies.” 

“Oh, yeah?” He likes the sound of that. 

“Yup,” Stiles agrees, taking a bite of what’s left of his food. “You’re very talented.” 

“You’re referring to my abs.” 

“Yes,” Stiles laughs. “But also you’re pretty good. I liked the second Dead By Sunrise. You’re good in it.” 

“I’m nothing like you,” Derek waves his hand, drinking some more. Stiles has never seen Derek even get tipsy, so he’s entertained by this, watching him drink. “You’re – an actual artist.” 

“I’m a hack job,” he shrugs. 

“Why would you say that?” He demands, scrunching his face together like this comment has made him mad. “Just because that fuckface you dated said so on Twitter? He’s just mad he lost to the fucking Red Sox.” 

Stiles guffaws. He was definitely pissed that he lost to the fucking Red Sox, no doubt about it. “He’s mad because I wrote the truth, I think.” 

“What I mean is, I’m not – you. People hire me because I’m good looking. I don’t do anything that great, I just show up and look good. That’s nothing.” 

“And I look like trash always,” he’s joking, pointing to himself with a smirk, but Derek isn’t kidding around. He’s being deathly serious. 

“You make things. I can’t imagine what that’s like.” 

“I write about my shitty exes,” he waves his hand, like it’s nothing, nothing at all. “People don’t take me seriously.” 

“Well, I do. And I think my sister is sort of right,” he meets Stiles’ gaze head on. “Maybe you really are one of the greatest living artists.” 

Stiles sighs through his nose and he looks away. The water, again. “You’re trying to get into my pants.” 

“Well, yeah, but I don’t think I have to try that hard.” 

“Oh, Jesus.” 

“I mean, I wouldn’t say that just to sleep with you. I’m saying it because, I don’t know. It pisses me off you let him get in your head, like that,” he points to his own head, his temple, and Stiles thinks that Derek has no idea, no clue, just how much space Matt Harding takes up in his head. “You’re everything to so many people. You don’t even know that. You really should. My sisters treat your records like Biblical works. They’re not the only ones, yet one word from that fuckbag and you convince yourself he’s right and everyone else is wrong.” 

Stiles shifts in his seat, and he knows, at least a little bit, that Derek is right. It seems absurd, because Stiles is sitting here in his favorite Interpol t-shirt and ripped jeans, no socks no shoes, and yet Derek can say shit like that to him and mean it. 

Stiles is somebody. Matt had spent so long, and still seems to be actively trying, to convince Stiles that he’s nothing, no one, just to control him. Logically, he knows that. But like he’s said, some things just stick. There’s not much he can do about that, except try harder. 

“So there’s more than one Hale sister that’s a Stilinskinator,” Stiles quips, instead of choosing to respond to anything else that Derek had said. 

Derek grins at him. He knows Stiles is being evasive, but he doesn’t seem to care. “Cora is the fanatic, yes, but there are a couple others who think you’re the second coming.” 

“So half of your family thinks I’m some genius. And you…what? Just grin and bear it?” 

“Stiles,” again, he wants to use another word, “I’m being clear. I think you’re as good as you think you’re not.” 

“Tell me something,” Stiles leans back in his seat and Derek tracks the movement, watches every muscle, the same way he likely watches Stiles’ tour videos. “…all these years your sisters have talked your ear off about me and played my albums and hung my picture up in your mother’s house. You wanted me the whole time. Or am I wrong?” 

Derek taps his fingers on the tabletop. It’s some kind of tic of his, tap tap tap, that Stiles has never figured out what it means. “I shouldn’t answer that.” 

“Why?” 

“Because you’ve been very clear about what this is, and I’m not jumping at the chance to freak you out.” 

“You mean how we can’t date?” 

“I mean how you can’t be with me for real,” he explains, grabbing for his wine glass again, taking a big sip. “I shouldn’t tell you what I’ve thought of you all these years.” 

“What’s the harm?” He shrugs. He’s goading him. He knows he is. He’s poking the bear. 

Derek is often times unflappable, but this is not such an occasion. They’re fucking each other right now, just without moving, and Stiles knows it, and so does Derek, it’s in tone, it’s in body language, eye contact, and Derek is not the master of it like Stiles is. Verbal sex is something Stiles used to be good at, is maybe getting the hang of again. “You want me to tell you the truth?” 

Stiles runs his finger over his bottom lip just to watch Derek’s reaction. It does not disappoint. “I’m practically begging you, yeah.” 

Derek lets out this incredibly ballbusted sigh, shaking his head, looking away, before looking right back at Stiles again. In the silence, the server returns and collects their empty plates. Stiles looks at her and thanks her, to which she smiles, but Derek just sits there and stares at Stiles, stares, stares, stares. 

She leaves the room, and they’re alone again. The air is heavy. 

“I’ve always wanted you,” he says, finally. 

“You mean, you’ve wanted to fuck me.” 

“I mean I’ve wanted _you_. Fucking you, being with you, all of it.” 

Stiles cocks his head to the side and smiles at him. “You know I’m not some dream boy who hangs on a wall that you can jerk off to. I’m a real person. I’m deeply fucked up.” 

“Oh, I know that,” he says, genuine, honest. “But you still are my dream boy, even if you are fucked up.”

So, that’s the truth. That Derek wants Stiles badly. That he’s wanted Stiles badly for years. That he’s often thought about being with Stiles, that he’s imagined Stiles as this perfect and unattainable person who his sisters fawn over and who crowds of people sing along with every night. Stiles is not that person. Derek knows it at the same time he doesn’t; he thinks he’s got a handle on who Stiles is, what he’s really like. 

He doesn’t. But Stiles won’t lie to him. “You know I can’t be that person.” 

“It doesn’t matter,” he waves his hand. “I’ll take what I can get.” 

Stiles isn’t sure what to make of that. He isn’t sure if he should go upstairs and take his bags and leave, he isn’t sure if he should perhaps stay here in Vancouver with Derek for all eternity and blow off the tour because fuck it, he isn’t sure if he shouldn’t just say okay, let’s be together, he isn’t sure at all. 

One thing he is entirely sure of is that he wants Derek to give it to him. He wants Derek to take all the parts of him Stiles can willingly give. It’s not wrong. It isn’t, he tells himself. Derek is under no illusions. 

Stiles stands up and he clears his throat. “Do you want to go upstairs?” 

“Yes,” Derek says, no hesitation.

They don’t even make it all the way up the steps before they’re on top of each other. Derek pushes him against the wall and kisses him, shoves himself between Stiles’ legs, knocks a picture frame off the wall. Stiles pants and he lets it happen, nearly losing his balance on the step when Derek pushes his hands underneath Stiles’ shirt. 

They get to the landing, the second floor, and Stiles finds himself missing his shirt, his belt is undone, Derek’s hair is a mess. They crash into the opposite wall, Stiles’ back jammed into another picture, but he doesn’t care, just wants Derek to touch him more, all over him, everywhere. 

In the bedroom, all their clothes have disappeared before they’re even at the bed. Stiles says, “you can be rough with me this time,” in a breathless voice. “I trust you not to hurt me.” 

Derek kisses him and gets him on the bed, on top of him, their bodies pressed together fast and hard. He says, “I’d never hurt you,” and Stiles has heard that before, but it doesn’t matter. Derek pushes Stiles’ legs up, bending them at the knees, feeling with a single finger for the spot where he can push inside. “You have no idea how often I think of fucking you.” 

He’s on top of Stiles again, covering him with his body, but it’s just so he can stretch his arm out to grab the lube from his bedside table. Quickly, he slicks his fingers and presses them in, looking right into Stiles’ eyes the entire time. 

“I want you so bad,” Stiles tells him, biting his lip, letting Derek fold his legs back even more so he can work his fingers in faster. “Jesus Christ –“ 

Derek doesn’t waste any more time. He makes quick work of getting his dick wet, pushing Stiles’ legs as far back as he can. It’s a bit of a burn, because Stiles hasn’t been moved this way in a while, but it works – Derek gets off the bed, pulls Stiles to the edge, pushes himself in all the way with no warning. 

Stiles cries out, because that’s a lot at once, so Derek leans down and kisses him on the mouth, swallowing that noise down his own throat. “You’re okay?” 

“Yes,” Stiles says to him, breathing out through his nose. “More, harder.” 

Derek obliges, holding Stiles’ legs for him. He doesn’t take his eyes off of Stiles’ face for one second, not a single solitary second, watching as Stiles takes it and likes it. His own erection is full, leaking precome onto his stomach, jerking with Derek’s fucking. He hasn’t been fucked face to face with a guy in … years, easily. It’s different, like this. Better, almost, especially with Derek. 

He’s so fucking hot. His arm veins are pronounced, his skin is tanned, he’s big, everywhere he’s big, and Stiles wants it to last forever, the sex. He wants to stay in this bed getting fucked just like this as long as he possibly can. 

But it’s so good, the angle is just right. Stiles’ breath hitches and he reaches out to grab Derek’s arm, gripping it tight, shuddering. 

“You’re gonna come just like last time,” Derek says to him, watching Stiles shake and start in on a litany of high moans and Derek’s name, again and again. “Come just like this, baby, just like this.” 

And there it is. That word Derek has been dancing around. Stiles is too far gone to give a shit about it, and frankly, in the moment, he likes it – he comes across his stomach and it’s hot, wet, slimy on his skin. He says, “oh, fuck, Derek,” or more whines it. 

He expects Derek to finish, but he doesn’t. He pulls out, pushing Stiles up higher on the bed, getting on top of it with him. 

He gets on his knees, and he uses his tongue to lick the come off of Stiles’ skin. If Stiles hadn’t just blown his load everywhere, he’d be doing it right now. He watches and can’t believe it, Derek’s tongue swiping against his skin, through the coarse hair leading down to his groin. It is fucking obscene. “Jesus,” he breathes. 

Derek flips him over. Pulls Stiles up onto his hands and knees, gets back inside of him. “Oh, my god,” Stiles whines, because he can’t help it. Derek grabs his hips and pounds into him roughly, so Stiles’ teeth chatter until he grits them together. 

He finishes with a grunt, shaking his come out into Stiles’ body, bearing down over his back. They stay locked together for maybe another minute, both of them coming down from the orgasm, before Derek slides out with a nasty sounding squelch and falls over on the bed, taking Stiles with him. 

They’re lying face to face in the pillows. “You are good at that,” Stiles tells him. 

“I know. Lots of practice.” 

“Don’t be gross.” 

Derek huffs a laugh. “You know, you didn’t bring your guitar or anything.” This is a bizarre and random comment, but true all the same. “I figured you never went anywhere without it.” 

“I used to not,” he agrees, sighing through his nose. “But I’m on a break. I’m tired of playing.” 

Derek nods his head, like he gets it. Then, he has another random comment. “This house is like the FBI for all its security, so don’t worry about that. I get the idea you have concerns about that.”

Right, because Stiles seems physically incapable of going a single place by himself without Boyd being there with him. It is not an unfounded fear, not even close – and it’s not just about how there are likely weird gross perverts who want to chain him up in their basement or think they want to kill him or something. It’s also because Stiles has it on very good authority that, given half the chance, Matt would hurt him again. 

Cutting him out of his life without even saying so much as a word to him about it was the coward’s way out. Matt likely goes batty with rage whenever he thinks about it. 

“I’d never let anything happen to you,” he says, and he means it. Stiles isn’t sure what to do with that statement. Believing it is tantalizing. Thinking it is a lie is his automatic setting. “Plus, Snowball can be vicious when prompted.”

“Oh, that makes me less afraid of him,” he quips. 

Derek laughs, then he goes quiet for a while, and his eyes are heavy. It’s almost two in the morning, after all. “I know you’ve slept all day, but that just took the last of my energy and I’m fucking exhausted.” 

“Go ahead and sleep,” Stiles encourages. 

“If you’re up, feel free to let Snowball out. The yard is fenced in.” He’s already punching at a pillow, setting it up just how he likes it. “Help yourself to the fridge and everything.” 

“Okay,” he says. Honestly, Stiles could stand to sleep more, so he doesn’t get up. Derek grabs him and pulls him up against his body, shoving his nose into Stiles’ neck and inhaling. Stiles laughs, angling himself away. 

“You smell just like I remember.” 

“All right, go to sleep,” Stiles chides, rolling his eyes. Derek keeps his hands on Stiles, cradling him against his body, even as he closes his eyes and starts to fall asleep. 

Stiles dozes, because a good fucking will exhaust even the best of us – but by the time Derek’s bedside clock reads five in the morning, he’s wide awake. Derek is snoring, loud, so Stiles sits up and heads to the bathroom to clean up and brush his teeth. 

He gets dressed and goes downstairs, where he finds Snowball is awake in the dimly lit living room, sitting up straight and cocking his head to the side when he sees Stiles. 

Stiles hesitates at the sight of him. Then he says, “uh, you wanna go out?” When he gets no response other than blinking, he angles for a word he’ll likely recognize. “Outside?” 

Snowball wags his tail and jumps off the couch, trotting across the room towards the dining area that Stiles and Derek had eaten in only hours before, where the double doors to the back yard are. He gets to them and then looks at Stiles expectantly, so Stiles pushes the doors open and lets him run out. 

It’s dark out there. Stiles finds a light switch and illuminates the yard so he can watch the dog run around, find a place to take a piss. He reaches into his pocket and digs his cigarettes out, lighting one as he hovers on the back deck, staring at the water. 

He doesn’t smoke when he’s touring for obvious reasons, so this is the first one he’s had in weeks. It tastes good, feels good, calms his nerves. 

As he stands there, he thinks. There’s a lot to think about. It’s quiet out here, no one waiting for him, no one expecting something from him, no one to ask him to perform tricks. Just him. It’s been so long since he’s been this alone. It almost makes him want to cry, to think of that, how surrounded he is all the time, how people are always watching him. He cannot fail, not at anything, without someone knowing about it. These past few months have felt like failure, that everyone’s been tuned into, and it’s miserable, it’s exhausting. 

Then, he has to think about the fact that Derek had called Stiles baby. He rubs at the back of his neck and smokes more, shaking his head. He really shouldn’t let Derek call him that. It’s a term of endearment, yes, but more than anything else, it’s a term of ownership. It suggests that Stiles is _his_ , his to call pet names, and Stiles certainly isn’t. 

He wonders if it’s okay if maybe he wishes he were. Maybe he wishes he were Derek’s to assign pet names to. But then it isn’t okay, he knows it’s not okay, because Stiles is screwed up. He’s too much of a basket case to be anyone’s anything. Even this, Matt will take from him. Matt used to call him baby and other things, too. Lots of other things, too. 

Snowball comes running up to him. He drops a yellow tennis ball at Stiles’ feet, wagging his tail and panting with his tongue hanging out, excited. Stiles has never played with a dog before, but he gets the general idea. He picks the ball up and winces at how it’s covered in slobber, but he throws it, watches the dog chase after it, scoop it up, come back for another round. 

He throws it again and again, because Snowball apparently does not tire of this game. He does the fake-out trick, where he pretends to throw it but really just tucks it behind his back, and he watches Snowball’s dumb ass wander around the yard sniffing for it, baffled. 

He is a giant idiot, just like Derek had said. Stiles decides he’s not going to be biting Stiles anytime soon, so there’s no reason to be afraid of him. 

Inside, he looks at all of Derek’s family pictures. He notices that in more than one of the group ones, Cora is wearing a Free At Last tour shirt proudly. She wears that thing a lot, it would seem. Derek’s other sisters are pretty and range in age all the way down to one who is maybe 17 at oldest. Derek is 28, so that’s ten fucking years of kids, at least. 

Stiles is flipping through the channels on television and the sun is in the sky by the time Derek comes down the stairs. But he’s not in his underwear half asleep - he’s bright eyed, dressed, smiling at Stiles sprawled out on the couch. “You wanna come for a run?” 

“Uuhhh,” Stiles blinks at him. “I’d rather eat barf.” 

Derek laughs, but he’s not deterred. He’s seriously going to go for a fucking run. It’s barely seven in the morning, and there he fucking goes. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” he says, and then he claps his hands at Snowball so he perks up and tags along, out the front door, gone. 

Stiles is alone again. He sits there and soaks in the feeling. He could go berserk in here and no one would know. There’s no one around to hear him. It’s nuts. But he can’t think of anything crazy to do, so he just sits and watches the Barefoot Contessa. Maybe being alone is overrated. 

Derek is back in exactly twenty minutes, and he’s sweaty. Snowball seems riled up from the exercise, panting and skittering on his nails to his water bowl in the kitchen. Derek wipes the sweat off his brow, smiles at Stiles, pants, looks at what Stiles is watching. “You’re learning to cook.” 

“God no. I just like her voice. She’s soothing.” 

“Uh huh,” he’s smiling, still. “You want to shower?” 

“I already did last night,” he waves his hand, nonchalant. 

“I meant with me, Stiles.” 

“Oh,” he sits up. That is a different kind of shower entirely. Derek is standing there, worked up from exercise, covered in sweat, asking if Stiles wants to have sex with him. This is a no fucking brainer - he’s seen Derek’s shower. It was literally built to be a sex room, Stiles can tell. “Twist my arm, why don’t you?”

They have sex in the shower. Derek is good enough at maneuvering it that Stiles knows he’s done it in here before, but he doesn’t care. It’s fun, Derek is enthusiastic about it, and Stiles gets to have another orgasm. Plus, when they finish and Derek moves onto the actual washing himself up bit, Stiles is treated to a real show. 

Derek is the kind of hot that is sculpted. It is made, definitely made, after long hours of working at it, banning himself from carbs for months at a time. Watching him wash his hair as steam billows around him and water drips all over his body, Stiles thinks there should be an old school porn soundtrack playing over their heads. He is unbelievable, in how hot he is. 

If they spend a little bit too much time kissing afterward, holding each other underneath the spray of the water, just enjoying each other’s body and company, it doesn’t really mean anything. Stiles is on a break. He can do whatever he wants with whoever he wants. And the man is irresistible, anyway, so Stiles is sort of powerless to stop it.

“Don’t you have work to be doing?” Stiles asks as he buckles his belt in the bedroom, raising an eyebrow. “It can’t all be sex and eating.” 

“I go back to set tomorrow so you’ll be free to roam the city,” he grins at Stiles from where he’s tying his shoes on the edge of the bed. “I have to be there at three in the morning.” 

“Yikes.” 

“What’re you gonna do, you think?” 

Stiles actually has no fucking idea. He has not been allowed to just freely roam a new city in forever. When he was with Matt, he wasn’t allowed to do much of anything, and even before that, he mostly just wiled about in his home cities – LA, Nashville, and New York. The thought of not having anyone tell him where to go is enticing. 

“Maybe I’ll go drink a beer,” he thinks out loud, and Derek shakes his head. 

“That’s way too wild.” 

“Maybe I’ll get breakfast.” 

“You’re going with Boyd, aren’t you?” Derek asks - there’s an unspoken question there. Which is that Derek wants to make sure Stiles isn’t going to wind up kidnapped by a fanatic as a result of being irresponsible. 

“Of course, I’m not insane.” 

Derek stands up and looks like he’s about to say something – then, he’s cut off by the distinct sound of the front door closing downstairs. Derek’s smile falls off his face and he abruptly goes ashen pale, all color draining clean out of it, as a woman’s voice calls his name up the steps. 

Stiles looks at him. “Uh,” he says. 

Derek rubs at his forehead and looks…horrified. Absolutely fucking horrified. He’s got this panic stricken look that Stiles has never seen on his face before, and it would be funny, save for the fact that Stiles has no clue what’s going on here. “Oh, shit,” he mutters, voice low, despondent. 

“Who is that?” Stiles demands – Snowball isn’t going insane downstairs so it must be someone who he knows. Not a stranger, at least. 

Derek takes him by his arms and says, “I did not do this, I did not ask them to come, I swear to you, I wouldn’t do that.” 

The voice calls up again, sounds closer, and Stiles get nervous. 

Derek says, “it’s my mother.” 

This is not good news. Stiles says, “…oh.” 

“I’m sorry, I swear I would not have asked her to come, she does this sometimes, just, just, shows up,” he sounds angry, irritated, like he’s going to go down there and lose his mind on her. 

Stiles is in no position to be meeting Derek’s fucking mother. First of all, he doesn’t want to, really doesn’t want to, because this isn’t even a real god damn relationship. He should not be meeting Derek’s mother. There’s no reason for him to, but he’s here, and so is she. 

Derek gives him an apologetic look, and shrugs, like he has absolutely no clue what to do. She calls his name, again, sounding more agitated, and Derek swears under his breath. “I gotta…” he says, then he goes. He has no choice. 

He leaves the door wide open, so Stiles watches as he heads to the landing, the part of the stairs that overlooks the downstairs part of the house. He says, “what the hell are you doing here?” 

“Surprising you!” 

Yup. She sure is. 

“We can’t come see you, now? You have the day off, don’t you?” 

Derek glances sidelong at Stiles, who’s just hovering there in the bedroom, frozen still. 

“No, it’s just – this isn’t a good time, I’m sort of…” 

“I don’t see the issue. Come down here!”

Derek looks at Stiles again. He is hesitating. He doesn’t know what to do, he isn’t sure what Stiles wants him to do, because Stiles is giving him no indication of what he wants Derek to do about this. With this great big heaving sigh and a low exhalation of _fffucckkk_ under his breath, Stiles resigns himself to his fate. He will go out there. He has no fucking choice. What’s he gonna do, leap in Derek’s closet and hide? He’s a grown fucking man. 

He moves, so Derek’s eyes bulge out of his head because he likely wasn’t expecting Stiles to come out – but come out, Stiles does. 

“I’ve just got company,” Derek says, right as Stiles emerges into the open light. He stands there, thin smile on his face, and looks down. He expects just one of them, but oh no - there’s more. 

Cora is there. Another one of his sisters, too. And then his mother. All three of them turn to look at him at the same time, and Stiles watches all three of their faces change. 

Derek’s mother says, “oh,” in surprise, and Cora looks at Derek like he’s done something completely unforgivable.

She goes, “ _Derek_ ,” in this incredulous, angry voice through grit teeth. 

The other sister says, “holy shit.” 

Derek palms his face. He is speechless. He has no idea what to do. Stiles waves with one hand, then stuffs both his hands into his pockets. 

“Derek,” Cora repeats, more forceful. She’s mad. She is big time mad. It’s not like Derek can sell it any differently – there is no other reason why Stiles Stilinski should be in Derek Hale’s home in Vancouver, far from anywhere Stiles lives, at nine in the morning, unless they are fucking. Big time fucking. “Mom?” 

Derek’s mother is plastering this smile on her face, like this situation is out of her control but she’s making the best of it anyway. She thinks she’s being quiet when she asks the girls, “is that Stiles Stilinski,” in a low voice, through her teeth, but Stiles hears it. 

“Yes,” Cora says, then she looks to Derek. “Why is Stiles Stilinski here?” 

“Well,” Derek starts. He’s got nothing. Frankly, neither does Stiles. 

“I guess we shouldn’t have just barged in,” his mother says. It’s an understatement.

**

The other sister’s name is Laura, and she regards Stiles as though she thinks he’s not a real person. Even when he shakes her hand and introduces himself, even when he says her name back to her so he won’t forget it, even after the unspeakably long car ride to the place where they’re going to eat, she still looks at him like he’s not really there.

Cora is mad and trying to hide it, because Stiles is here, and the situation is already awkward enough without her being pissed off. She shoots Derek dirty looks because he’s been lying to her, and because he’s fucking her favorite artist after she very explicitly told him not to do that. 

Derek’s mother is nice. She is clearly shellshocked and she, too, sort of acts as though Stiles isn’t a normal person, but she is nice. She smiles at him and introduces herself and says he’s too thin, he has to come out and eat with them, they came all this way. Stiles does not want to go to breakfast with Derek’s mother and two of his sisters, but he’s locked into it all the same. 

What the hell was he supposed to do? Insult his MOTHER? Upset his SISTERS? He’d look like a fucking asshole, and he’s doing well enough at looking like a fucking asshole as it is. He had no choice, no say in the matter. He got in the backseat of the SUV with Derek, Cora in the way back, Laura in the passenger seat, and now they’re here. 

At breakfast. In Vancouver. With Derek Hale’s mother. It sounds like a fucking mad lib. 

Derek knows all the cool places to go in the city, because he apparently lives here half the time, which Stiles had not known – he thought Derek just had this house, here. But Derek lives here. He likes it here. The breakfast place he chooses is trendy and busy, and it almost looks like they won’t be able to get a table - but the girls shepherd Stiles to the front and have him ask for a table for five, and suddenly, there’s a table available and they’re sitting at it. They know how to milk someone’s fame to get what they want, likely because they use Derek for the same things all the time. 

Stiles stuffs his face behind his menu and says to Derek, “you need to suggest mimosas so I can get one and not look like an alcoholic to your mother.” 

He immediately puts the menu down so Derek does not have time to respond. He clears his throat and says, “does anyone feel like having mim-“ 

“Oh my god, I’d love one,” Stiles says. The women all agree. 

Laura stares at Stiles. Big time stares. She pretends to not stare, but she is. Stiles clears his throat and tries to think of something to say, but Christ, he lost his guidebook on how to interact with his fuck buddy’s family after they barge in unannounced. 

When the waitress comes, she does not look at Stiles. Derek she seems a bit flustered by, but Stiles she cannot even look at. When it’s his turn to order, her pen is shaking on the notepad as she takes it all down. He has half a mind to tell her it’s fine, it’s okay, because you’d think he were a murderer, the way she can’t even look directly at him. 

“Since when am I more famous than you?” He asks Derek as soon as she’s gone. Derek shrugs his shoulders. 

“Since always, Stiles.” 

Stiles blinks at him. As far as he’s concerned, he’s middle tier. Yes people buy his music a lot and stream it and yes he’s well known, but he sort of thought of himself as being somewhat niche. Like, people know who he is, but not everyone cares that much. 

“So,” Derek’s mother starts, zeroing in on him. Stiles grabs his mimosa and takes a giant sip – here we go. “You’re shorter in person than I thought you’d be.” 

Stiles has heard that before. He looks lanky and tall in his videos and in pictures – he is tall, and he is lanky, but not 6’5” like he can sometimes appear. He sort of thought being eclipsed by Matt’s giant form for years would’ve gotten rid of that rumor, but apparently not. “Oh, I’m just average height.”

“You’re shorter than Derek,” she says. How is this even a topic of conversation? 

Derek drinks his own drink and rolls his eyes. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be on tour?” Cora asks him. She’s still pretending to not be mad, and failing miserably. 

“I have a break,” he says to her, and she frowns, like she imagines he doesn’t take breaks. 

Laura speaks. It’s almost surprising to hear her voice - she’s been mute since they sat down. “We have tickets to the San Francisco show,” she blurts out. Then, she blushes. Stiles does not get this – their brother is a fucking celebrity. How are they this bad with interacting with other famous people? Have they not met anyone else famous aside from their brother? 

Then, he thinks they probably have met other celebrities. Jennifer Blake, for one. But not one they genuinely liked or gave a shit about. Stiles, on the other hand, they give a shit about. Derek has made that crystal fucking clear. 

“I didn’t even know there was a San Francisco show,” he smiles at her. She blinks rapidly and stares pointedly at the table top. 

This is painful. 

He turns to Derek. He better start talking, and he better make this a whole hell of a lot less awkward. After all, Stiles is only doing this entire charade for Derek’s sake. 

But Derek has got nothing. Not a fucking word. Stiles would rather have Snowball sitting here next to him than Derek at this point – at least the dog would be entertaining. 

“You and Derek are…” Talia points between the two of them again and again, and Stiles drinks his mimosa down to the last fucking drop. “Together?” 

“Jesus Christ,” Derek mutters under his breath. “Mom, you’ve gotta be kidding me.” 

“What?” She feigns innocence. “I can’t ask? You know,” she’s adjusting herself in her seat, scooting slightly closer to Stiles, “I always thought you two would make a good –“ 

“I will walk out of here and take him with me, mother,” Derek says, so she puts her hands up in surrender. 

“I’m just saying.” 

Cora is getting more and more mad by the second. She wants to be alone with Derek to scream at him, but she can’t, so she settles for meticulously picking apart the wrapper of her straw, piece by piece. 

Stiles takes Derek’s half finished mimosa and drinks it in one sip. He’s overcome by the urge to put his sunglasses on, in spite of the fact that they’re indoors. He just sort of wants to…hide. He knows that Derek’s mother is going to hate him, because anyone’s mother would hate him. He is a renowned fuck up, a serial dater, a person who uses other people for his own gains, and worst of all, he is a drunk. They print all of this, day in, and day out. She reads it. Stiles is certain she has read all of this, many times before. 

It’s not like he’s fantastic at meeting people’s parents. Matt’s mother had liked him, sure, but that’s because she was a fucking lunatic and a drunk herself. She would like anyone who brought wine to her house, for Christ’s sake.

“I think you are so talented,” she says to him, her smile wide, her eyes flicking between him and Derek again and again. “I know Derek thinks so, too.”

“Oh, my god…” Cora presses her hands to her eyes and sighs deep, long, tortured. This is likely a hell on earth for her, perhaps even worse than it is for Stiles. Here she is, with her favorite artist on the planet, and her mother is there humiliating her, and she’s just learned her brother is fucking him. It is the sunken place, for her. 

“Where are you from, again?”

“Uh, Beacon Hills,” he gestures at the waitress as she walks by, who nearly seizes at being looked at directly by him, patting his empty mimosa glass, “can I get another of these please?”

“Beacon Hills,” she repeats, blinking, then looking at Derek. “That’s not far from us. That’s twenty miles away. You grew up there?”

“What is this, his interrogation?” Derek snaps at her, giving Stiles another frantically apologetic look. 

“I can’t ask him questions?”

Cora has taken to glaring at her phone, likely texting her friends about what a nightmare her entire life has become. 

“We’re just friends mom, we’re not getting married.”

“Friends,” she repeats. This disappoints her, unbelievably, like she thought Derek already had a fucking ring picked out, or something. “A friend in your house at nine o’clock in the morning –“

“Oh my _god_ ,” Cora half shouts across the table at her, horrified. 

Stiles gets his third mimosa. As he leans back and takes a big sip, his eyes sweep over a table full of teenaged girls, whispering to each other, staring at him. He wants to put his fucking sunglasses on, so bad. 

“You worked at the same Starbucks that I did,” Laura pipes up. Stiles looks at her, and she actually manages to hold his eye contact. “Um…they put a plaque up.” Stiles actually had not known that. He hasn’t been back to Beacon Hills or even the surrounding area in years, years and years, and he certainly hasn’t been to visit his high school job at Starbucks. But they put a fucking plaque up, like, oh, the great Stiles Stilinski once foamed milk here. It’s ludicrous. 

“Isn’t that a coincidence?” Talia has this nutso smile on her face, looking at Derek like she’s just found the red string of fate tying Stiles and Derek together, because he and Laura worked at the same Starbucks, years apart. 

“Stiles, can I see you in the bathroom for a second?” Derek says. He doesn’t wait for a response. He just grabs Stiles by his shoulders and pulls him up, away from the mimosa, half dragging him toward the men’s room at the other side of the restaurant. 

In they go, and Stiles rounds on Derek the second they’re alone. “Oh, boy, do you owe me big time,” he accuses, pointing a finger in Derek’s face. 

“I am so, so sorry. This is worse than I could have ever imagined.” 

“Cora is going to kill you in your sleep.” 

“I know that,” he pinches the bridge of his nose. “Leave it to my mother to show up at the worst possible second.” 

“I think the _worst_ possible second would’ve been about fifteen minutes before.” 

“You’re not being funny.” 

“I am, I can’t help it,” he holds his hands up, smirking. “It’s not so bad. I mean, Laura can barely look in my direction, but…” 

“She’s not usually so shy. It’s just the fame shine, most likely.” 

“Again, I’m just not that fucking big of a deal!” 

Derek gives him another look. “Stiles. You had the number one album in the world for several weeks. Maybe just take the compliment.” 

Stiles blinks at him. Oh, right. He did have that going for him for a little while. 

“I’m getting the sense your mother is already ordering the wedding invitations.” 

“Oh, she is. She’s mentally picking her mother of the bride dress, too. She does this every time she meets someone I’m with. I could bring Bigfoot home and she’d start making the guest list, no questions asked. I’m her only son, so.” 

Yes. Stiles knows what it’s like to be someone’s only son. Then, that makes him feel like this great big horrible piece of shit, so he tries to stop thinking about it. “So, she wants to marry you off…?”

“Yes. It’s half of what she thinks about.”

Jesus. Stiles wouldn’t know much about this, because his mother died a long time ago, and his dad would prefer it if Stiles holed himself up and became a magazine collector or something. Honestly, he has thought very little about getting married in his life. It just seems like a pointless ritual for legal purposes, and not in the least bit romantic. He wonders what Derek thinks about marriage; he must think of it positively, because he wanted to marry Jennifer Blake. 

Then, Stiles doesn’t know why he cares. He shouldn’t be thinking things like that. “Look, we should get back out there.” 

“Can I say for the millionth time how sorry I am?” 

Stiles smiles at him. It’s not really his fault. His mom is just sort of…hands on, that’s how Stiles will put it. All in all, the breakfast winds up going all right. Cora never gets the opportunity to scream at her brother, Laura manages to say a grand total of five more words to Stiles, and Derek’s mother hugs him goodbye. It’s sort of a long, hazy blur, by the time the two of them are alone again, in Derek’s big house, with Snowball staring at them. Stiles is amazed they had actually agreed to go when Derek had asked them to; he would’ve thought Talia would find any excuse to hang around and see Derek being with Stiles in any capacity, but she took pity on Derek, and perhaps Cora as well, and bid them goodbye at the front door. 

He rubs at his eyes and dives head first into the couch. “That was…” 

“I’m so, so sorry.” 

“I guess I’m just lucky it wasn’t all seven of them.” 

“Beyond lucky, trust me,” he sits down right next to Stiles on the couch. He’s in a good outfit, he smells like good cologne, and Stiles likes him, in this moment. He sits close, close enough their knees are touching. “I cannot believe you actually met my mother.” 

“She’s a nice lady,” he says. 

“She’s a psychopath, but thanks.” 

Snowball comes over and pants for attention, licking Stiles’ hand until he receives pets. 

“He likes you,” Derek repeats for only the tenth time since the two of them met. “And I also think that my mother liked you.” 

Stiles looks at Snowball. He doesn’t really know what to say to that, and the longer he sits here just sitting, thinking, the more he realizes that he’s allowing this whole entire thing to get out of hand. Wildly out of hand. He’s staying in Derek’s house. In his fucking bed. He’s making friends with Derek’s dog and allowing himself to be called _baby_ and fucking Derek in his shower. And the cherry on top – he just spent the morning with part of Derek’s god damn family. 

And Derek is sitting there saying that his mother liked Stiles. As if it would matter. Stiles had seriously sat there and wondered what Derek thought about marriage, because he’s screwed up in the fucking head. This isn’t a real thing. Vancouver and this house and the dog and all of it – these are things he cannot have. 

He had tricked himself, under the guise of vacation, into thinking he could have them. He pretended that if he acted normal, then he would be normal. But he’s not. 

Derek leans in like he’s going to kiss Stiles. Maybe it’s the mimosas or just the entire fiasco of this entire trip, but Stiles pulls away. There’s a heaviness in his chest that he cannot ignore. It’s the weight of a secret, he knows it is, and really, he’s tired of carrying that fucking thing around like a dead horse. He says, “Derek, I need to tell you something.” 

Derek blinks at him. He moves back. He says, “all right.”

It is anyone’s guess what Derek thinks that Stiles is about to say. Maybe, from the way Stiles looks so serious, from how he won’t make direct eye contact with him, he thinks Stiles is about to admit that he’s been fucking someone else. Maybe Josh Perry, even. For a moment, Stiles has no clue what he’s about to say, himself. He stares at the ground. He can hear a clock ticking somewhere in the house. He curls his fingers tighter on his knee and he just looks pointedly at the floor, mouth opening and closing. 

He has danced around the subject before. He has said it in metaphors. He has alluded to it in so many words. He’s almost said it, thousands of times. At the start. While it was happening. In the aftermath. While writing the album. After. To his friends. To anyone. 

But he has never actually just… said it. It’s hard for him to get his mouth around the words, but he knows that he has to. If there is anyone in his life who deserves to know why Stiles insists on keeping them at an arm’s length away, it is Derek. Derek has treated him like…just like a person. He has been so fucking nice to him, and Stiles won’t even – he won’t even let Derek in. Not all the way. Derek has to tell his mother that the person he’s sleeping with is just his friend, because Stiles insists on it being that way. It isn’t fair, holy shit, it isn’t fair, and Stiles knows it isn’t. He has been unfair. Another thing to feel shitty about. 

He blinks and keeps his eyes down. There is no right way to say it. There is no good way to say it. It’s better to put in a metaphor, to be interpreted, to have people guessing what he means. It is so much harder to say it…like it really was. “Matt hit me,” he says, just like that, because there is really no other way to say it. Derek is completely still next to him, silent, not a word. “Um. He – he – he – he beat me.” 

Derek must be getting whiplash. One second he is sitting at breakfast with his mother, and the next, he’s having this dumped onto his lap. He hasn’t said anything just yet, like maybe he is expecting more clarification. 

“It’s what - it’s what’s wrong with me.” 

Derek says, voice even, tone unreadable, “he hit you.” 

“…he – yeah.” 

“How many times?” 

This is not a question Stiles had anticipated. He frowns and looks at Derek in the face, and he has this… very not-Derek look in his eyes. His mouth is a straight line, his eyes intense, his face just … different. It is not the way Derek usually looks at him. It reminds him, somehow, of the way he would look at zombies in Dead By Sunrise. This determined, angry expression, a look he never gives to Stiles or anyone in reality, because it’s harsh. He doesn’t know the harsh side of Derek Hale very well. 

“That’s not – it wasn’t just…” he rubs at his face and wishes he could take it back, never say it in the first place, but he can’t. He can’t. He said it, now he has to keep saying it. “…I don’t know. Hundreds? I don’t know.” 

Derek looks away. He’s got this look on his face, far away, hand going up to his mouth, like he’s realizing what that means. He might have thought oh, Matt hit him a couple of times and then Stiles left him. Or even, Matt hit him once and then Stiles left him. But he’s realizing that Stiles means that Matt, constantly, again and again, repeatedly, hit Stiles. He gets that Stiles was not just smacked around a little, he was abused. Again. And again. He is probably thinking that lots of things abruptly make sense, now. 

Stiles’ drinking, for one. The way Stiles flinched back the first time they had sex. How Stiles will tell Derek he’s used to people treating him like shit. How Stiles doesn’t know how to be alone, probably couldn’t function properly without someone telling him where to go, what to do. The record. The things he says. Nashville. The way he will lash out, no warning. Even Stiles’ irrational fear of Derek’s big dog is likely rooted, somehow, in all of this shit. 

When he looks back to Stiles, he’s got that weird look on his face again. He says, “who knows about this?”

Stiles looks at his feet. He feels ashamed. It is a familiar feeling. “Boyd.”

He’s waiting for more names. None come. None. No one. 

“Jesus Christ,” he says, and he’s reaching his arm out. Putting it around Stiles’ shoulders. He says, “Jesus fucking Christ,” again, and he tightens his arm, pulling Stiles close up against him. “Stiles.” His name, like he feels sorry. He can’t find the words. Just Stiles’ name. There are no fucking words. 

“It just,” he starts, then doesn’t finish, not for a full extended minute of quiet, in the living room. “One day he just. He just hit me. I didn’t…he just hit me. I just froze up. I didn’t know what to do. And it kept happening.” 

Derek rests his chin on Stiles’ head, but he stays quiet. 

“I just didn’t want to make him mad,” tears well up in his eyes, filling his vision. “It never occurred to me to hit him back, I didn’t want to hit him, I loved him.” 

“Jesus Christ.” 

“He hurt me so bad,” he cries, shakes, his hands, his entire body, shaking, because he’s remembering it, even worse, having to admit it out loud. And Derek holds him and makes these shushing sounds, but Stiles is on a mission. Now that he’s opened his mouth and said it, he can’t stop. It tumbles out of him. The floodgates are opened. He can’t stop. “I thought he was going to kill me. He would hit me so many times I’d just - I’d just – stop moving so he’d just stop. I just didn’t want to make him mad.” 

Derek is stiff. He holds Stiles and wipes at his tears and listens, but he is still and silent. He is absorbing this information, piece by piece. Stiles has no clue what he would say if someone dumped this on him, either, has no idea what he’d do, how he’d react. It’s an impossible thing to know how to respond to. 

“Then they forced me to go out there and sing songs about it,” he cries. “It’s my own fault, I wrote the stupid songs, but it’s - it’s my own fault I let him hit me in the first place.”

“Stiles.” He pulls away, so he can look Stiles right in the face. “It is not your fault.” 

“This is why I can’t be in a relationship with you,” he says, and Derek sighs through his nose. “He messed me up, he ruined me, I can’t be with someone else, he made sure of it. He got in my head, he’s in here, all the time, yelling at me, he’s in my fucking head.” 

Derek doesn’t know what to say. He looks at a loss for words. He reaches out and takes Stiles’ arm, turns it over, so his scars are out on full display. Yes, those ones, too, are from Matt. He knows that, now. See, Derek had suspected there was something he was not being told. He suspected Matt had something to do with it. He knew there was something wrong, something really wrong – but Stiles can tell, just from this quiet shock he’s in, that he did not think it was this. Not this.

This is Stiles Stilinski, for Christ’s sake. He’s on magazines, he can’t go anywhere without being seen, getting his picture taken. He’s on a world tour. People see him constantly. How could he hide this? Things like this don’t happen to people like Stiles. 

But it did happen. 

“You think you can just convince me, or like I’ll fall in love with you and it’ll all be fine,” he says, and Derek palms his forehead. It’s exactly what he thought. Stiles can tell. He thought he’d just wear Stiles down with his charm and his good looks, and Stiles would soften up and want to be with him. Eventually. Jesus, he was going to wait for it. “But it’s not like that. I can’t be with you, I’m a fuck up, I’d fuck it up, I’d just - I’d just ruin it.” 

He’d just ruin everything. He knows he would. And he couldn’t live with himself if he ruined things with Derek. 

“But I want you to - you’re the only person who I can - I just don’t want you to not be around,” he begs, clutching onto Derek’s arm with both his hands, like he’s petrified Derek will get up and walk away. As though he thinks Derek would be disgusted with Stiles, now that he knows this big secret. Now that he sees Stiles for who he really is. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” he promises. “Stiles, it’s okay. It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere, just…just take a deep breath. You’re having a panic attack, just calm down.” 

It’s no use. Stiles cries until he can’t cry anymore. He wants it out of him. All of it.

**

Derek is not a trained therapist. He doesn’t know the first thing about dealing with mental illness. He does not know the first thing about handling trauma, because his life has been trauma-free. He grew up in a nice house. He had a big family. His dad died when he was young enough to not know what to think of it. His mother paid for his acting classes and encouraged him, believed in him, went with him on auditions when he was a teenager. He got big roles. He made millions of dollars. He sleeps with famous people and has big houses and nice apartments and everything he could ever want.

He does not know what to do with this. Stiles would never in a million years dream of asking anything from Derek, of seeking some kind of serious help from him. Derek couldn’t do it. It is too big a burden to lay on anyone. 

“I’ll fucking kill that guy,” Derek tells him, and Stiles waves him off, because that’s just him thinking with his dick. “Stiles, I’ll fucking ruin his life.”

Stiles rubs at his eyes and smokes. He stares at the water, watching it ebb and flow, watching the sun set over it, the glittering waves, the shining sun, the green grass. It is like something out of a post card, and Stiles wishes he were in that post card. Trapped in a painting, locked into a perfect sunset. Forever, he wants to be here. “I don’t want to ruin his life,” he says, and his voice is shredded. He had cried so hard for so long on Derek’s couch that he’s amazed he has any voice left. This is the type of shit he’d get in trouble for, because he shouldn’t be putting this much strain on his voice. He’s still got shows to play. “I don’t want to care about his life.” 

Derek is staring at him. He’s got this intense look on his face. He wants to do something to make Stiles better, but he has no idea what that could possibly be, what he could ever possibly do to make this even remotely okay. “This is why you don’t talk to your father anymore,” he assesses. 

Stiles puts his hands in the grass after putting his cigarette out and nods his head, silent. This is why…a lot of things. 

“Stiles, I’m going to say something, and you might not like it,” he turns his body in the grass, shifting, facing Stiles head on. He’s sitting criss-cross like a little kid, and it makes Stiles almost smile to see him like that. “It is insane to me that you will not tell people that he –“

“Because I’m so credible.” 

“What does that matter? It’s true.”

“Imagine it,” he says, because he has, holy shit, he has. “Imagine I just got on stage and announced to the world that Matt Harding is a sociopathic abusive piece of garbage, and imagine what people would say. The guy is a fucking living legend as far as they’re concerned. Imagine it.”

Derek frowns and searches Stiles’ face, before turning his own toward the sun. He squints against it and he frowns, and he looks so fucking unhappy. He looks like he wants to do something, like he wants to get up and run all the way to New York City and barge in through Matt’s door and wring his fucking neck. “What you wrote about in Nashville, you meant…when you say you miss the hurt, you mean that?” 

This is an nuanced conversation, and Stiles is exhausted. He doesn’t know what to tell Derek, how much to tell him, how explicit to be, how much Derek wants to know, how much he could stand to know, how much Stiles is willing to let him know. The truth is, sometimes hurt becomes familiar. Sometimes pain is so deeply entangled with love that it becomes blurry. It is not something that Stiles wants anyone else to ever be able to understand, and it’s what he meant, in Nashville. 

At the time he wrote that song, yes, he meant it. He meant it. He meant that he missed Matt, he meant that he missed the relationship, even the parts that were horrible. It’s not easy to explain. When you love someone who hurts you like that, it’s not easy to fucking explain. Still, Derek wants an explanation, and he wants Stiles to say the truth, so he does. “There is a part of me,” he starts, slowly, “that wants it back, yes.” 

Derek is a jealous person. He’s not jealous like Matt was, like how Matt would go through his phone or lose his mind at the idea of Stiles spending time with Scott or any other men, or anyone, or like how Matt would hit him for talking to an ex-boyfriend. Not like that. He’s jealous like he’s a man and he gets jealous, like a normal human person does. “You seriously want to get back with –“

“No, that’s not what I mean,” he covers his face with his hands. This is complicated, he’s tired of talking about it. “I just – he was my whole fucking life, because he made sure he was all I had, okay? You can’t just – I can’t just –“ 

“Jesus Christ.” He’s said that a million times since Stiles first opened his mouth to say all this shit. It’s like half of what he’s said. It’s all he can come up with. “I’ll kill that fucking guy.”

“Just…” Stiles rolls his eyes and looks back to the sunset. It’s almost totally gone, under the water, vanishing in stripes of orange and yellow and red. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

Derek is not happy with that. There are so many things he wants to ask and know because … well, who wouldn’t? The thing is, he’s also not a complete fucking jackass, so he nods his understanding and turns himself toward the setting sun, pulling his knees up, resting his arms on them. He takes in a deep breath, then lets it out. “There are such great sunsets out here. It’s one of my favorite parts about living here.” 

“It’s nice,” Stiles agrees. 

They’re quiet for a little while. Snowball has been passed out asleep in the grass for a while, now, fur blowing in the gentle breeze. There is the distant sound of Derek’s neighbors laughing and talking, but Stiles ignores it, and he has this moment, where he’s normal. He is not himself. He is not going back on tour in ten days. He is just a person, in a backyard, somewhere in America, that no one gives a shit about. 

“Stiles,” Derek starts, turning to him, so they meet eyes. Stiles knows he looks like hell. Puffy, red, miserable. But Derek looks at him like he’s not. “I would never, in a million years –“

“I know,” he says. He doesn’t really need to hear Derek say it. He knows.

**

Derek has to get up at two in the morning to go to set and do his job. They sleep together in Derek’s bed, until Derek’s alarm goes off and he groggily gets up. He turns on the light in the bathroom so Stiles squints against it, watching his silhouette vanish as he shuts the door gently behind himself. Stiles listens to the shower run and he wants to be in there with him, but he’s so tired, he closes his eyes again and is back asleep.

He wakes up to Derek’s hand on his back. Derek is leaning over him, a smile on his face, thin, but there all the same. “I’ve gotta go,” he says, and his voice is gentle, quiet, as though he’s speaking to someone much smaller and more sensitive than Stiles. Though, maybe now Derek sees Stiles as small and sensitive, knowing what he knows. “I have no idea when I’ll be done.” 

“Okay,” Stiles rasps at him. 

“Can you do me a favor?” He rubs his hand up and down Stiles’ back, slow, and it feels so fucking good. “Let Snowball out and give him breakfast?” 

“Oh, yeah,” he agrees, no hesitation. 

“He gets two scoops of the kibble under the kitchen table.” 

“Okay.”

“It wouldn’t kill you to play with him.”

“Ugh,” he makes a face. “If you demand it.” 

Derek smiles at him. All teeth. The movie star. He is one, after all. Stiles wants him. “I wish I didn’t have to go,” he says. “I want to stay with you.”

“Go make movies,” Stiles gestures at him, vaguely, because he’s exhausted and it’s two in the fucking morning. “I will be here when you get back.”

There’s this moment where Derek looks at him, and it’s like, he isn’t so sure that’s the truth. Like he thinks Stiles is going to bolt, or something. All the same, he sighs through his nose and frowns, shaking his head. “Okay,” he murmurs, rubbing Stiles’ back just a bit more.

**

Stiles wakes up and it’s light outside, just barely. They had gone to bed in an exhausted heap at barely ten o’clock, so he’s well rested, but he still feels like he barely slept at all. He sits up and hovers there, his legs hanging off the edge of the bed, and he stares at his feet.

He has this thought, that maybe he shouldn’t have told Derek that. Then he has another thought, that he had to fucking tell somebody, because he was going insane, it was killing him. It was fucking killing him. 

Downstairs, Snowball is restless. He wants attention, and he wants breakfast, and he wants to go outside. Stiles isn’t used to having another living person relying on him, so he feels weird about the way Snowball runs right at him and yips, expectant. Stiles has never really taken care of someone else, before. He can barely take care of himself. 

Derek’s kitchen is big and shiny, filled with appliances he likely does not know how to use, that he pays other people to use for him. Stiles finds Snowball’s food bowl on a mat in the corner. He fills it with two scoops, just like Derek had instructed, and then watches sort of distantly as the dog wolfs the entire thing in less than a minute. He looks at Stiles with big eyes, like Stiles is stealing something from him. 

He knows that the dog is just working him over, but he gets a third scoop into the bowl all the same. 

Outside, Snowball runs and chases birds as far as he can, before the fence stops him. He demands to play fetch, nosing the ball at Stiles’ feet until Stiles relents and picks it up. He throws it, the dog brings it back. He throws it, the dog brings it back. Again, and again. It’s monotonous, but it takes up all of his mental faculties, so he thinks about nothing else but the ball, and the dog. 

He calls Boyd and asks him to come pick him up so they can get breakfast together. Instead of climbing in the back like Boyd probably expected him to, he gets in the passenger seat, sunglasses on, a frown on his face. “You look like shit,” Boyd tells him. Stiles huffs and buckles up, shaking his head. 

“Oh, believe me, I know.”

“What’s going on with this fucking guy?” He demands, pulling out of Derek’s gated driveway, onto the residential street, where there are people walking their dogs and going for jogs in the morning sunshine. “You with him, or?”

Stiles doesn’t really know how to answer that. He shrugs. “He is nice to me.” 

“That’s why you’re leaving his house in the morning looking like that, because he’s nice to you,” Boyd sort of has an automatic setting, where he assumes everyone is garbage and trash until they prove themselves otherwise. Especially considering Stiles’ track record with men, maybe this is entirely fair. 

“I look like this because this is just what I look like.” 

“Stiles, what’s going on?”

“We’re sleeping together, I don’t know,” he shrugs. 

“God,” he says between grit teeth, but for the moment, the subject is dropped. They go to the restaurant, and it’s a nice place where they can sit outside on a patio underneath an umbrella with the breeze blowing on them. Stiles opts for outside, orders an orange juice, while Boyd gets black coffee and sits there looking irritated. 

“So,” Stiles starts, then lets it hang there. 

“I don’t think you should be here,” Boyd says, apropos of nothing, frowning at him. 

Stiles rubs at his face and sighs. Here we fucking go. 

“Everyone says this guy is a fucking piece of shit. Yet here you are, like a moth to a flame, because I guess you didn’t get enough last time.” 

Boyd is a brutal person, especially with his honesty, so Stiles is used to him being viciously truthful, even when he says it in such a shitty fucking way. “There has not been two more different people on planet earth than Matt and Derek Hale, just trust me.”

“Oh, like last time?”

Last time. Stiles frowns and looks away. Last time is referring to a conversation they had years ago, in San Antonio, when Boyd had heard Matt say horrible things to Stiles after his show. He had heard Matt be terrible, had heard him push Stiles against the wall in his tour bus, shove him so hard he bounced off the wall like a basketball. He had stormed off, and away, leaving Stiles alone to marinate in it – Boyd had come inside the bedroom, and frowned. 

He had asked what was going on, and Stiles waved it off. He just gets mad sometimes, he just loses his temper, he doesn’t mean anything by it, he’s just so big he doesn’t realize how strong he is, it’s no big deal, just trust me. 

“Not every guy on earth is like that,” he mutters, and Boyd blinks at him. 

“Except the guys you tend to want to be with.” 

“That’s a shit thing to say.”

“I don’t think you should be seeing this guy.”

“I’m not seeing him,” he insists, but Boyd is not buying it. “He treats me nice and doesn’t put his hands on me, what more can I ask for? We’re just fucking.” 

“Oh, you want to be with him, I see it in your face,” he is disgusted by the idea, mad about it. “Stiles, I am not going to stand around and listen to some other guy push you around. I’m not going to lie for you.” 

“I never asked you to –“

“You said, please do not tell anyone. You pay me to do as you ask.”

The waitress comes and wants to know what they’re having to eat. Stiles clears his throat and pulls his sunglasses over his eyes, so she won’t see them, won’t be able to read his expression. 

When she’s gone, Boyd levels him with a very serious stare. “I can’t keep doing that forever. Erica asks me questions, what am I supposed to say? She knows I know everything that you do.”

Stiles makes a face at him. “What the hell is Erica doing asking you fucking anything?” 

Boyd sips his coffee, and then he sighs. “Because we’re seeing each other.”

“What?” Stiles rears his neck back, he’s surprised to hear this. The last he knew, those two barely even knew who each other was. 

“We have been, for months.”

Stiles curls and uncurls his fingers on the table top, unsure of what to say. He looks away, out across the street, the sun in the sky. “I did not know that. Holy shit, I didn’t know that, I’m an asshole.” 

“That’s not even what we’re talking about,” he waves it away, like it’s nothing, but it’s not nothing to Stiles. His good friend and his security are together and he’s been so wrapped up in his own bullshit, he hadn’t even fucking noticed. “I am not going to sit there and lie to her, and I am not going to sit there and let you get taken over by another fucking sociopath.” 

Stiles gets his point of view. It would be hard for him not to. He had asked Boyd to do something nearly impossible, something unfair, something fucked up. He had asked Boyd, who walked into a room to find the god damn MVP from the New York Yankees choking his charge half to death, to not tell anyone what he knew, what he saw, what he’s heard. That isn’t fair, but Stiles had asked it of him, and Boyd has dutifully done what Stiles had asked him to. 

There’s a limit. Stiles gets that. Stiles and Boyd used to have entire conversations. They used to pal around and go get drinks and laugh and just…they used to be more than just two people who are constantly in each other’s company because it’s their jobs to do so. Stiles was Boyd’s friend. It could not have been easy to see all this happen, and then to be asked to do nothing about it. 

“You don’t know him,” he says.

“I’ve heard that before,” Boyd counters. 

“He’s not like what they say he –“

“I’ve heard that before.”

Stiles doesn’t know what else to say to him. Boyd seems resolute. 

He looks at his hands, at his half finished juice. He clears his throat and says, “I told him.”

That catches Boyd’s attention. He turns his entire body towards Stiles and stares at him, like he doesn’t believe that, not for a second. After all, Stiles has been carrying this fucking thing around and suffering in silence, even when he was as clear as he could’ve possibly been on the album. No one around him, his closest friends, his fucking father, none of them – none of them know. Yet, he’s told, of all people on earth, Derek Hale. 

“Well what did he say?”

He said a lot of things, really, tons of things, Stiles has his pick of the litter, for which soundbite he feels like filling Boyd in on. “He said he’d kill him.”

Boyd breathes a laugh out through his nose, rolling his eyes. “Well, he can get in fucking line.” 

The food comes. Stiles picks around at his potatoes, his eggs, until Boyd barks at him to eat something, so he does. He eats bite after bite, mechanically, barely tasting his food. It’s funny, because he always thought that he would feel better after telling someone what had happened to him – but now, he just feels empty, like without the secret, he’s got nothing left anymore. 

“Can I ask you something?” 

Boyd gestures, like go ahead, mouthful of food. 

Stiles picks up a potato with his fork, then puts it back down. “Did Matt ever try to – after I told you not to let him in. Did he ever…? Try to come back?”

Boyd chews. Swallows. “He did.”

Stiles knew he didn’t want to hear the answer, yet he asked it anyway. He imagines that Matt tried calling, got sent straight to voicemail, because he was blocked. He imagines Matt tried to text, and the texts never sent, because he was blocked. He imagines Matt tried to e-mail, and got no response. He imagines he tried to go through Scott, through Erica, through even Lydia, and got turned down. And he imagines this infuriated him, made him fucking livid, made him want to hurt Stiles so fucking bad he’d regret ever trying to get rid of him. And then he showed up, to physically hurt him, to choke him or smash him into something or any number of horrible things. But then, he never got the chance, so now he’s just out there, thinking about it. How badly he wants to put his hands on Stiles. 

It scares the shit out of him. It scares the ever living shit out of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really struggled with the scene where Stiles tells Derek what happened, because no matter what I did it sort of felt like it came out of nowhere; but I just sort of thought well...no matter what it’s gonna seem like it comes out of nowhere. There’s never really a good, normal time to say something like that. I really worked at that part in particular because it’s one of the moments I’ve thought of writing since I started this one so I hope it’s not too over the top.


	5. Circling the Drain

Stiles is attached. 

He had fully expected Derek to start treating him differently. He expected that Derek would start acting as though he were damaged cargo, or like he was a ticking timebomb set to go off at any moment, if Derek made the wrong move or said the wrong thing. He anticipated it changing the framework of this thing they’ve got going on here in an irreversible way, because that’s what the entire experience of having lived through it did to Stiles.

It changed the framework of his existence. It leeched into his entire life and ruined his friendships, his relationship with his dad, his music, his everything. He waited for it to change he and Derek, too. 

But Derek does not treat Stiles like there’s something wrong with him. He doesn’t tip toe around like he thinks Stiles will freak out at him for doing the wrong thing. Really, Stiles was thinking he’d have his bags packed and on the next flight out as soon as possible – but he isn’t. Derek is just the same. He’s just the same. 

He takes Stiles out to dinner at nice places and shows him all the tourist traps that Vancouver has to offer. Even though these places are crowded and people see him and a couple have the balls to come up and actually speak to him, Stiles has fun everywhere they go. Derek takes Stiles to the waterfront and they walk on the crazy boardwalk that’s suspended over the water, where there’s people everywhere, but they lean over the edge and stare into the water, and it’s like they could be all alone. It is beautiful here. They film movies here, after all, so of course it’s a beautiful place. 

Derek does not ask litanies of questions about everything that happened when Stiles was with Matt. He doesn’t ask about the scar on Stiles’ back or what kinds of things Matt would say to him or why Stiles never told anyone or any of the exhausting questions he knew he would be asked if he ever did tell anyone. Derek seems to have simply absorbed the information, filed it away, only uses it to explain Stiles’ odd behavior, at times. 

Stiles isn’t sure if Derek knows that this is the only good response he could have had. Or if he’s just avoiding the subject. Either way, Stiles is attached to him, big time, in the worst possible way that he could be. He wants to sleep with Derek forever and stay in the Vancouver house forever and he wouldn’t even mind having to be around Snowball for the rest of his life, if it meant Derek would be there, too. Stiles knows it’s partly because Derek is the only other living person aside from Boyd who knows what happened to him, and that sort of a thing forms a bond whether Stiles wants it to or not. He knows he’s just latching onto the first person who doesn’t treat him like shit. He knows all of this.

It changes nothing. 

On one of his last nights there, Stiles wakes up in the middle of the night to Snowball going ballistic downstairs. He’s barking, growling, vicious, and Stiles immediately flies into a panic. He thinks about when Derek told him outside in New York that people would know where he was from his instagram story and come and find him. Every time they’ve gone out together in Vancouver, they have gotten their picture taken. Fans have come up and Stiles has taken pictures with them, and they’ve been posted and shared a million times, millions of people know that Stiles is in Vancouver, anyone who cares to know where he is, even some who couldn’t care less, knows that he’s here. 

“Derek,” he shakes Derek once, so his snoring abruptly stops. Then he keeps shaking. “Derek, there’s someone downstairs.”

“What?” Derek is grumpy. He’s been woken up, and he’s still being shaken, so of course he’s grumpy. 

“The dog is fucking going insane, there’s someone –“

“It’s the neighbor’s cat,” he grouses, pushing Stiles’ hands away. “He’ll quiet down in a minute.”

The dog is still barking. Loud, again and again, and Stiles shakes Derek harder. “Derek, seriously. Derek, Derek –“

Derek sits up. He’s got this look on his face like he’s going to be annoyed, like he’s going to tell Stiles to relax, to just go back to sleep – but then he really looks at him. Stiles is wide awake, eyes big in his head, stiff, still, petrified. He sighs through his nose, because this is one of those moments where he finally has an answer for Stiles’ bizarre and paranoid behavior, and he knows he cannot just ask Stiles to go back to sleep. He pulls the covers off of his body and swings his legs over, feet on the ground, standing up. 

He’s in his underwear, nothing else. “I’ll go check, all right?”

“Okay,” Stiles agrees. He thinks about staying here in the bedroom and waiting, but then he thinks he cannot be alone in here, he can’t let Derek leave him alone in here, so he gets up, too, frantically chasing behind Derek on shaking legs. “Don’t you have a weapon, or something?”

“A weapon?” Derek repeats. He’s sleepy, his voice low and gruff. He holds his hands out, forms them into fists, and says, “these are all I need, my friend.” 

“Don’t be fucking funny,” Stiles hisses at him, over the sound of the dog continuing to bark. “A bat. A gun.” 

“You think I have a gun in this house?” 

“Why don’t you?” 

“You have a gun in _your_ house?”

“Yes,” he answers, immediate, and Derek seems taken aback by this piece of information. Stiles had bought the gun in Nashville, right after breaking up with Matt. He had Boyd go out and pick it up for him, and it isn’t like he had to go learn how to shoot – his dad taught him. He’s a good shot. Snowball is running around, Stiles can hear the click of his paws on the wood floors down below, bark bark bark, and Stiles has this thought, right then, as Derek stands there and stares at him, that Matt is definitely here.

It’s an insane thought. He knows it’s nuts. It’s paranoid. It’s insane. Matt did not log on and see Stiles is in Vancouver with Derek Hale, look up Derek Hale’s home address, get on a plane from New York, fly here, just to come and kill Stiles. This is something no one would ever do, because that’s completely fucking…just nuts. 

But then, there were lots of things Stiles had thought Matt could not or would not do. All of these things, he did. 

Derek opens the bedroom door and they go out into the hallway. Stiles latches onto Derek’s arm in a death grip, following behind him so close, he’s plastered to Derek’s back like a barnacle. “If there were someone in the house, the alarms would be going off,” he tells Stiles in a low voice. 

“Then why are you whispering?”

Derek clears his throat, speaks loud and clear. “I am not whispering, because there is no one here.” 

He turns on the big chandelier that hangs in the center of the living room, illuminating Snowball down there. When he sees someone has finally heard his alarm, he barks directly at them, like _come here, come down here right now_ , and Stiles digs his fingers so hard into Derek’s arm he’s sure it’s hurting him, but Derek does not try to pry him off or make a comment about it. 

They head down the stairs. Stiles honestly expects someone to leap out at them as soon as they reach the ground floor, but nobody does. Derek goes to the front door, turns on the porch light, and looks through the glass windows. 

Nobody. An empty parking lot, Derek’s big black car, the trees, the gate, still closed up tight. “There’s nobody here, Stiles.”

Still, Snowball is barking. It’s shrill and loud, so Stiles winces against it. Derek sighs and starts moving toward the dining room, where the doors leading out back are sitting. Snowball immediately starts going that way too, like that’s where the intruder is, out there, somewhere, and Stiles nearly trips over Derek’s feet, he’s still so close to him.

Derek turns on the dining room light. The table, the door to the kitchen, nothing else. He goes to the doors and finds the patio light, flicks it on. 

There’s a cat. It’s a black cat, fluffy, and unperturbed. It’s sitting on the patio and cleaning its paws, while Snowball goes ballistic at it through the glass, shoving his face right against the door, growling and chomping his teeth at the air. The cat does not care, because it knows Snowball can’t get to it. Derek turns to Stiles and says, “the neighbor’s cat.”

“Oh,” Stiles breathes out. He finally unclenches his hands from Derek’s arm, and when he pulls away, he sees that the skin had gone white where he was holding on, but Derek still does not complain about it. He rubs at his face and he feels silly, ridiculous, crazy, embarrassed, but Derek does not get mad at him or tell him he was being stupid. 

He just bends down and swats Snowball on the snout, so he goes quiet and flattens his ears back against his head, chastised. “That’s enough,” he says, and Snowball goes, with his tail between his legs, away from the cat, while Derek shuts the lights off and starts guiding Stiles away. “I told you, this place is locked down. I would not bring you here if it weren’t.” 

“Okay,” he agrees, voice shaky. There’s still something in the back of his mind that is telling him to be afraid, that there’s someone here, but he knows it’s all in head. All of these things that have happened to him are all in his head, now, but they still matter, they still control his life, and that isn’t fair. 

Upstairs, Derek closes the bedroom door and puts his hands on his hips. He says, “you really think he’d come all the way out here.” This is not a question. It’s a statement. He knows Stiles thinks that, he just wants Stiles to admit it, out loud. 

Stiles sits on the edge of the unmade bed, where only a little while ago they were curled up together in peaceful sleep. “I do not know what he’s capable of,” he admits, voice low, small, humiliated. “He used to be a person, now since I haven’t seen him in so long, he’s sort of a boogeyman.” 

A shadow in the closet. An invisible person the dog barks at. 

“You really have a gun.”

Stiles nods his head. “Yeah.”

Derek has nothing to say to that. What is there to say? Stiles had been so afraid for his life he had gone out and bought a gun to keep in his house. It is what it is. He comes over to the bed and gets in on his side, gesturing for Stiles to do the same. When Stiles doesn’t move, he grabs at him, pulling him onto the bed all the way, pulling the covers up over his body. “C’mere,” he says, the way he always says it. He tugs Stiles tight up against himself, pulling him close, pressing a kiss to his hair. Stiles burrows into Derek’s chest, where it smells like his skin and his cologne and just him, where it’s warm and safe. He’s beyond attached. He’s reliant. 

“I’ll kill that motherfucker,” Derek says into his neck, and he’s said this so many times it’s just white noise to Stiles, at this point. Empty words, you know. What’s Derek really going to do? Figure out where Matt’s next game is and show up and shoot him to death when he steps onto the plate? 

Derek isn’t really like that, anyway.

**

On the morning Stiles has to get on the plane and fly to wherever the fuck they bought him a ticket to, he packs his bags and then immediately wants to unpack them. He wants to rip them open and strew all his shit everywhere in Derek’s bedroom, so then he has to stay, then Derek has no choice but to let him stay. They had sex the night before, and it wasn’t the crazy desperate fucking Stiles has gotten used to, with Derek.

Derek had been slow and gentle, and not because he thinks Stiles is this traumatized person who needs to be handled carefully; but because Stiles had wanted it that way. He always lets Stiles set the pace, and that’s the pace he set, because he wanted it to last forever. Once he’s back on tour, he’s gotta go back to saying Derek is his friend, they’re just fucking, Derek is someone fun he knows, Derek is nothing to him, barely anyone. He’s got to go back on stage. 

Derek comes in and he moves like he’s going to pick Stiles’ bags up, to take them to the car, but Stiles stops him. He takes Derek by the arms and stops him, so they’re face to face, looking at each other. “Don’t make me go,” he says, voice small. Derek frowns at him. “I don’t want to go.”

But he has to. The tickets have been sold. They’re waiting for him in cities all up and down the West, and he has to go, he has no fucking choice. “I know,” Derek tells him, and he moves to get the bags again, but Stiles latches on tighter to his arms. 

“Come with me?” He tries, and Derek sighs through his nose, grabs Stiles back, by his arms, holds him there, eye contact. Derek’s eyes are dark and light at the same time, green, yellow, brown, intense. He imagines that Derek could come on the tour bus with him and then it wouldn’t be so bad, the tour, it wouldn’t be so fucking bad, because Derek would be there and Derek would help him stop drinking himself to death and Derek would be nice to him and make it easier for him to get up on that stage every night pretending to be something he’s not. 

“Don’t ask me for things I cannot give you,” he says, and Stiles bites his bottom lip so he won’t cry. He wants to cry, so badly. “If I could, I’d go anywhere with you, you know I can’t.” 

Stiles does cry. He’s cried so many fucking times in front of Derek Hale, he should really be embarrassed. He sniffles and his eyes well up and he can’t help it. He can’t do it again. He already did a month and a half, he can’t do another month, and then another month after that, and another, he can’t do it. 

Derek says, “don’t cry,” but it’s no use. Stiles is crying, pressing his hands to his eyes, sucking in great big breaths to try and get a hold of himself. He knows he’s standing here crying over the fact that, oh the horror, he has to go and do his dream job in front of people who have paid to see him because they love him and spend their money on him, he knows he’s spoiled, terrible, just awful, ungrateful, all of it. He expects Derek to tell him all of these things, but he doesn’t. He pulls Stiles in for a hug and holds him, rubbing circles on his back. “I cannot believe you can get up there and sing those songs, Stiles. After what happened.” 

No one ever tells him this. No one ever says it’s hard. No one ever feels bad for him. 

They go downstairs and Snowball is there, wagging his tail, waiting. Stiles still does not particularly like him, but all the same, he reaches out and scratches behind his ears in goodbye. Who knows when the next time he’ll see him will be? Stiles still has not checked the dates for the second leg, so for all he knows he’ll be in Europe for months on end. 

When they get to the airport, Boyd is standing there, waiting for them outside the terminal, and he looks beyond irritated. That’s sort of his automatic expression, so Stiles just sighs and unbuckles his seatbelt, while Derek pulls up right in front of him and leaves the engine idling. Stiles should say something, but he’s too scared to even look at him, for fear he’ll start crying again, and people will see him there, crying, like they love to see so much. 

He gets out. Derek gets his bags for him out of the backseat and comes around, setting them gently down on the ground underfoot. Boyd stands up straight and says, “you ready?” He does not even look in Derek’s direction. He’s already decided Derek is not to be trusted, so why even bother greeting the guy?

No, he’s not ready. Mentally, he’s still in Derek’s bed. “Yeah,” he rasps. He pulls his sunglasses on, his hat, his hood, frowning, looking miserable, and Derek looks right at him. 

He says, “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

Stiles wants to cry again. He looks away, at Boyd, who’s just standing there, glaring. 

“Stiles, hey,” Derek grabs Stiles by his chin and turns his face, so they’re looking at each other as best as they can, through both their pairs of sunglasses. “I’ll see you soon.” 

“Okay,” he says. What else is he supposed to say? 

“I’ll miss you, baby,” he says, voice low, and Stiles wants to push him away and say don’t call me that, don’t say that shit to me, don’t be like that, don’t do that, don’t fucking do this – then he wants to latch onto him like a sloth on a tree and demand he get on the plane and come with him, over his dead fucking body is he going without him, over his dead fucking body. 

“Stiles, let’s go,” Boyd snaps. He’s looking at Derek like he wants to do him physical harm, so Stiles blinks and clears his throat, shaking his head. He’s gotta go. 

“Thanks for letting me stay with you,” he says, mechanical, robotic. “I had a nice time.”

Derek smiles at him. Derek’s over here baring his fucking soul, putting it all out there in the open, letting Stiles know exactly what he thinks, what he wants, how he feels, and meanwhile, Stiles is muttering and staring at his feet, and Derek still smiles at him. He knows why Stiles is the way he is. And he does not care. He doesn’t mind if Stiles is like this. He is patient and kind and Stiles is garbage. 

“I will see you soon,” he promises for the third time, finally letting go of Stiles. Then he looks at Boyd, right into his eyes, and says, “maybe don’t just stand around next time someone puts their hands on him, huh?”

Oh, that’s how it is. It’s not just that Boyd hates Derek – Derek apparently now hates Boyd right back. Derek has learned that while Stiles was getting the hell beat out of him every day, Boyd was there, in the background, oblivious, not doing a single thing about it. Derek has learned that Boyd walked in and saw Stiles getting choked and did next to nothing about it, stayed silent, kept the secret, even though he was just doing what Stiles asked him to. And apparently, Derek does not care for this information, not one bit. 

“Listen, you fucking prick –“ Boyd walks forward, like he’s going to do something to him, like they’re seriously going to fight right here in broad daylight at the airport surrounded by strangers, but Stiles steps in between them, putting his hands against Boyd’s chest. 

“Let it go, come on,” he begs, and Boyd is still. He wants to reach over Stiles’ shoulder and punch Derek’s fucking lights out, he can see it in his eyes. But he’s a professional, so he just grits his teeth and turns away, taking a couple steps back, breathing out through his nose to calm down. Stiles turns to Derek and frowns at him, “that seemed unnecessary.” 

“Not to me,” he says. He shrugs his shoulders, casual, like he didn’t almost just get attacked, like he doesn’t care if Boyd does attack him. Stiles can only take so much posturing, so he huffs and grabs at his bags, shaking his head, slinging his backpack on and clutching his duffel against his chest. Derek smiles at him, gives him one last squeeze on his shoulder, and then he turns and goes, into his car, starting the engine, driving away.

Stiles stands there with his bags and frowns. This fucking sucks. 

“Stiles, let’s _go_ ,” Boyd barks at him, so Stiles moves his feet, goes inside. 

In first class with Boyd, Stiles pulls his laptop out and starts writing an e-mail. He had tried his hardest to wash his mind of all things tour, all things career, all things work, the entire time that he was in Vancouver – but whether he liked it or not, his mind would drift to the idea of performing again, and he knew he had to make it better, somehow. He had come up with a few ideas to tweak the tour, the setlist, the way it’s set up, all of it, so it could be more bearable for him. He comes up with a new setlist, with all the same songs but rearranged, so Nashville closes and Sea Monster moves higher up. He says he’ll agree to do meet and greets, like he had ardently refused to do throughout the past shows. He says he wants to do rotator songs from past records. Anything to look forward to, anything so it’s not just the same fucking thing night after night. 

He sends it to his team and then he sighs through his nose. He has the window seat, so he looks out at the tarmac, the employees with orange vests moving carts of suitcases, frowning. Boyd is next to him drinking a coffee, probably imagining how nice it would be to knock some of Derek Hale’s teeth out of his skull. 

He types in the address for his official website, and scrolls to the tour section. They had sent him an e-mail with the dates, a long time ago now, but he had deleted it as soon as he had gotten it, just to avoid having to think about it. Now, he has no choice. He needs to have some semblance of an idea on where they’re sending him. 

He scrolls and he sees the usual suspects. London, Paris, Dublin, Berlin, all of them sold out. He finishes off in the US, going back to New York for another show, an additional Boston show probably just because why the fuck not, and then, there. At the bottom, underneath Chicago. The final show. Stiles’ heart sinks deep into his chest, when he reads it.

Nashville, Tennessee.

**

Stiles doesn’t even go directly to his hotel when they land in Los Angeles. He gets into the car, barks an address at the driver, one that Boyd instantly recognizes and sighs at, but makes no additional comment on. He leaves his bags in the car when they park, leaps out of it, so Boyd is scrambling to catch up, running after him, swearing under his breath.

He goes up the steps, ignores the handful of greetings he receives as he makes his way through the offices, passing his own platinum certified record plaques, his own face staring out at him, and slams himself into the door marked with Lydia’s name. He bursts in without knocking, hard enough the door smacks into the opposite wall, and she’s just sitting in there. Her legs are crossed as she sits at her desk, laptop open, phone in front of her, pen in hand. She blinks when she sees him there. “How was –“

Stiles cuts her off. “You are trying to fucking kill me,” he accuses her, and she puts her pen down. She’s got this look on her face, like here we go again, Stiles screaming at me, here we fucking go again. “You are trying to fucking kill me on this tour, you don’t want me to make it, that’s so obvious to me –“

“Right. The label would love it if I killed off their biggest moneymaker.”

That’s really all he is to any of these people. All of them, they don’t give a fucking shit about him, not at all. Lydia is bad enough on her own. Throw in the label execs, and that’s a dead man’s party. “I begged you, and begged you, it was all I fucking asked of you, do not send me to fucking Nashville.”

She sighs. 

“Not only are you making me play there, you made it the god damn finale!”

“Stiles. You named a song after a city. You didn’t really expect us to just not –“

“I did, unbelievably! Because it’s all I asked for!”

He’s yelling. The door is wide open. There are interns and secretaries and people standing around with files in their hand, listening to this entire thing. Boyd is hanging back, staring blankly at the wall, no help, none whatsoever. 

“Sit down,” she gestures to one of the chairs in front of her desk. “Calm down, just relax.” She is so fucking condescending to him, she has always been, like he’s this irrational psychopath, like she’s so normal, like he’s completely out of control all the time. 

“Why are you doing this to me?” He does not sit down, and he also does not calm down. He comes closer, puts his hands on the desk, so he’s hovering over her, staring down right into her eyes. “Why are you fucking doing this to me?”

“Doing what?”

“You know I can’t go back there, I cannot go back there, I will not go back there.” 

“I don’t know that, actually,” she leans back in her chair and raises her eyebrows. “Because you have not been very forthcoming about what the god damn issue is, Mr. Stilinski.”

Mr. Stilinski. That’s what those fuckbags in the top offices call him, whenever he has to debase himself by going up there to talk to them. She’s saying it just to get a rise out of him, as if he hasn’t already risen to his fullest possible height, standing here screaming at her, fresh off the plane. 

“I told you,” he says through grit teeth. “I would go anywhere. Just. Not. There.”

“Why not?” She demands, shaking her head and holding her arms out. “Because you got broken up with there? Because that’s all I’ve got, Stiles! It’s all you’ve told any of us!” 

“Because I can’t go there.” 

“Stiles.” She stands up, all the way, and clicks her way over to the door, shutting it gently to get rid of the audience. It’s just her, and him, and Boyd standing here, the shades drawn, alone. “I cannot help you. I cannot do a single thing for you. Unless I know what this great big secret is.” 

“I don’t have one,” he says, immediate, quick. 

She crosses her arms over her chest. She looks at him. She thinks she can laser her way through his fucking skin, but she can’t, because if she could, they would not be having this conversation right now. “What happened in Nashville.”

“Why would I tell you?” He thrusts his arms out and wants to use them to sweep everything off of her desk in a fit of rage, but he doesn’t. “So you could fucking use it against me. Cancel the show, cancel the fucking show.”

“No.”

“You are an insufferable fucking bitch, you are horrible –“ but these things do not phase her. 

“Let me tell you what you are,” she starts, and she’s coming closer to him, close, so close he can smell her perfume, right in his face. “What everyone upstairs thinks that you are. Everyone here thinks that you are an entitled fucking asshole, because you act like it, when you’re not too drunk to emote much of anything at all.” 

Stiles clenches his jaw shut. 

“They think you are out of control, and they have charged me with making sure that you’re not, do you get that? I cannot help you if I have no fucking context for –“

“I quit. I’m quitting.”

“You cannot quit,” she informs him, each word emphasized, hard. 

“I will not show up.”

“They will drag you in, kicking and screaming, you know that. Legally, they will force you.” 

Stiles is running out of things to say. He’s backed into a corner, locked in this room, in this life, nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, and she knows it, and she knows that he knows it. He is caged up. 

“I set up Nashville because whatever it is, you need to deal with it. This is not some scheme to ruin your life,” she’s speaking to him in a dulcet, gentle tone, as though she’s speaking to a spooked animal. “I am not trying to hurt you. I am trying to help you, I have told you that, and told you that, you refuse to –“

“I’m quitting,” he says, again, maybe just to say it, to pretend he could get away with it. She blinks at him. These are just words. She knows that. He can keep right on saying it, and it will change nothing. 

“Stiles I am begging you,” she comes to him, holding her hands out, pressed together, as though she really is begging him. “To tell me what happened. This isn’t you. It hasn’t been you for years.” 

She’s right. Stiles has been some weird, alternative universe version of himself for what seems like forever, now. This person who yells at his crew and drinks too much and cries on stage, and is an asshole, insufferable, horrible. The problem is, this is not an alternative universe. It is this one. The one they’re all living in. It’s reality. It’s who he really is. Then, it is him, and it’s been him all along. 

“What happened?” She tries again. Boyd shifts behind him, like he’s agitated, like he wants to say something, do something, but he’s silent. 

Stiles told Derek Hale. He barely really knows Derek Hale, but he had told him, in Vancouver. Miles away from anyone or anything he knew, he told Derek Hale the truth, the thing he cannot speak out loud. He does not know why he can’t tell Lydia. Or Scott. Or Erica. Or the label. Or any of those people, anyone who could actually do something about this, no one, no one, no one. 

It sits there on his tongue. He imagines he says it, he just says it, the truth, and Lydia cancels the entire tour and she knows people who can make Matt’s life miserable, she knows how to make him look like the person he really is, she knows how to ruin him, she knows who to call. He imagines they’d put Matt in jail because no one thinks he’s lying. He imagines that everything gets fixed, if he just tells her the truth, like pieces falling into place. He imagines he’d feel so silly, for having kept it in for so long, when everything would get better, if he just said it. 

But it wouldn’t get better. It would get worse. 

They would all hate him. They’d pull up everything on him to make him seem unbelievable, to say he’s an alcoholic, a liar. They’d burn his CD’s and Matt would make more money and they’d sue him and he’d have no career, nothing left, nothing. They would force him to get up there and say what happened to him, over and over, over and over, just so they could say, no it didn’t. No he didn’t. That didn’t happen. They’d tell him it didn’t happen. It would be worse. There is no scenario where things get better. There is no reason to tell her anything. She cannot help him. Nobody really can, because he flushed all his opportunities to help himself right down the toilet, every time he got one. He had bruises, he showed no one. He had gashes, his scars, and he showed no one. There is no evidence. There is nothing. 

“You want me to play Nashville, fine,” he says, and Lydia presses her hands to her eyes. She is so frustrated, so angry with him. She keeps trying to smoke him out, but he keeps just digging himself deeper into the fucking hole. Nothing she says or does makes a difference. Stiles knows it must be infuriating. He is infuriating. He’s impossible. “If they think I’m signing another one of those contracts after all this…”

“Stiles,” she says, disappointed, angry with him. “If you try to walk on them, they will take all of your music and keep it from you.” 

Oh, he knows they will. “They can fucking have it.” 

She is shocked by this. She blinks, looks at Boyd, who looks back at her, silent. She says, “Stiles. Your life’s fucking work. Your entire life. Your – this is what you always wanted, and you’d fucking walk?” 

When Stiles was a kid, he used to fantasize about being on the radio. He wanted people to see him, know him, care about him, want to be him, who doesn’t want that? He poured himself into learning music because it was all he was good at, it made him feel good to do it. He learned four instruments and wrote songs in his school notebooks and played the talent shows and did bar shows when he was just sixteen and he crawled his way to a record label and signed the contract. He worked, and he worked, he toured, he went where they told him, he did what they wanted him to, because at least he got to make his music. It was all he fucking cared about. 

All he really has left anymore is his music. It’s all he fucking has left. 

“I don’t give a shit,” he tells her, and Lydia is staring at him like she does not even know him. She doesn’t recognize him. 

“There is something wrong with you,” she hisses at him, just like Scott has, like Erica has, everyone. “Are you drunk?”

There were in-flight cocktails, yes. “Oh, fuck off,” he says to her, turning, pulling the door open. “I’m sick of this fucking bullshit,” outside, they’re still all staring at him. Some of these people have never even met him, but they walk past his records every day and know he’s their best artist and they think he’s a god, or something. Now, here he is, drunk from the airplane, shouting at his manager, making a scene. 

Boyd is hot on his heels as he staggers his way back down the stairs. He wants to get to the car and then to the hotel, to the mini bar, drown himself and fall asleep and hopefully never fucking wake up. “I’m getting sick and tired of just standing around listening to you lie to people,” Boyd starts, and Stiles really cannot take this right now, so he doesn’t respond. 

In the car, Boyd slams the door behind them, and then Stiles is trapped in the tight space with him. He corners Stiles, levels him with a steely gaze. “Nashville is just a place. You give it too much power by refusing to even set foot there.”

“It isn’t just a place,” he spits, shaking with anger.

“You’re not going to let them just have your work –“

“Fuck it.” He throws his hands up, as the car starts to move, as they’re leaving and headed off and away downtown. “Fuck it, let them take it all.”

“Jesus Christ,” Boyd rubs his hands up and down his face. He is this close to giving up, Stiles can tell. It must be exhausting to have to be around Stiles 24/7, all the time, getting dragged down into this pit with him. “She would know what to do.”

“She would force me to get up in front of everyone and say it,” he shouts, and it’s loud, so loud in the confines of the car, impossibly loud. “She would make me – they would –“

“Has it ever crossed your mind that if he did it to you, he will just go ahead and do it to someone else if you never say anything?”

“That’s not my problem,” he glares out the window. He stares at the passing street lights, cars, people, and he wants to leap out of this car even though it’s moving and just disappear into the crowd, vanish altogether. “It’s not my fault. I shouldn’t have to – I shouldn’t have to fucking destroy myself, it isn’t fair, it isn’t fucking fair, to put that on me. Maybe he just shouldn’t do that to people. Maybe that.” 

Boyd is running out of things to say. He sits there and he fumes, fumes, he’s so fucking angry. Stiles is an impossible problem that he cannot solve. He has been trying for years. 

“They would take everything from me, you know that. God if I ever…” he can’t even think about it. He can’t even think about it. 

What would happen to him if he ever opened his mouth. It is a paralyzing thought. Stiles often times thinks that living this way for the rest of his life would be preferable to having to be honest. There is something so safe about spiraling, because letting everything go and just fucking it all up is easier than holding onto it. Stiles thought that telling someone about what happened, talking about it more, would make it better.

It is making every thing, every single little thing, so much worse. It’s out of his hands. He can’t even control himself. He starts having the nightmares, again. He hasn’t had them in a long time, because he has spent so long burying things. He’s got a graveyard in his head, and he’s unearthing all the dead bodies, and in the process of doing so, he is setting them all loose on himself. The living dead of his trauma, all of them, come to strangle him. He wakes up in cold sweats, convinced someone else is in the room with him, convinced he’s not alone, convinced if he makes a sound someone will hurt him. He doesn’t know if it’s because when he was in Vancouver, with Derek, he was in his safe space, or as close to a safe space as he’s gotten for years; and now he’s just been dropped head first right back into this living hell. Probably, that has something to do with it. 

It is a load of bullshit, he thinks, when people say talking makes things better. He wants to go back in time and undo it. He wants to un-say what he said to Derek. He wants to go back to Vancouver, and stay there, never leave. He wants to have never gone to Lydia’s office, because she made him feel worse. He wants to not be a fucking piece of shit who doesn’t care what Matt does to other people, so long as he stops doing it to Stiles. 

He wants his fucking music back. He can’t even write songs anymore. He can’t even make anything anymore. It is amazing how fast everything went up in flames the second he got on the plane and left Vancouver, left Derek, all of it. The moment he saw the Nashville show, the bender started. The downward spiral, the crash and burn. He avoids Derek’s phone calls in the days leading up to the show in Las Vegas, because he doesn’t want to talk to him and admit that it’s getting bad, it’s getting really bad, he can’t control himself, he can’t take care of himself, he’s not eating, he’s not sleeping unless he passes out drunk. He does not show to rehearsal. 

On the day of the show, he starts drinking at eleven o’clock in the morning, the second he’s awake. He showers, brushes his teeth, and washes the mint taste out of his mouth with vodka from the bottle. He knows that he has to go up there and get back up on the stage, and he reminds himself he has done it before, and he can do it again. 

The problem is, he isn’t sure that he can. That was before he told Derek everything. That was before Lydia told him she knew there was something wrong with him, before she said the label would take everything he has ever worked for away from him if he refused to sign on for another six records with them. That was before Boyd said Stiles was awful, horrible, for not letting the world chew him up and spit him out for the sake of not allowing someone else to fall prey to Matt’s fucking bullshit. 

And he’s going to go on stage and act like he’s so great? 

He has had this iron clad grip on the last thread holding him together. During the first part of the tour, he was crawling his way through it every single day, and he cannot do it again. He’s failing. He’s failing. He goes to soundcheck and he’s drunk, they can tell, but he doesn’t really care if everyone sits around whispering about him, he doesn’t really give a shit, let them say what they want. Derek calls, and Stiles ignores it. 

By the time the show rolls around, he is absolutely trashed. He’s able to stand and he gets up on the platform, but he knows he’s shitfaced. He holds his guitar and he rubs at his face. In the water bottle he takes up on stage with him, he’s got straight vodka, and he drinks it between every song. He fucks up the setlist and starts playing the wrong song, a different song from the band, and he laughs. 

The roar of the crowd makes him wince. The spotlight is so bright it makes him feel like he’s staring into the sun. It blinds him. He squints against it and it all starts to blur into one, one long song. He can barely remember where they’re at, even when he tries to look at the setlist taped by his feet. The letters all blur together. 

He had changed the setlist, he remembers. Everything is screwed up. He needs to have Erica shouting the song names at him, and even then, he can’t sing the words or he can’t get his grip right on the guitar, he’s in the wrong key, he’s completely off. 

By the time the finale rolls around, he cannot see straight. The crowd may not know what songs are next, but they know he still hasn’t played Nashville, and they want to hear it. They figure he’s made it the closing song. They chant it at him, again and again, and all it does is make him feel even more fucked out of his head. He gets his hands on his acoustic guitar and puts it on, then he just stands there. 

He strums a few times, and then he laughs. He bursts out laughing right into the microphone, shaking his head. He says, “I am so fucked up. I can’t, I’m so fucked up.” 

He takes his guitar off and throws it on the ground, and it’s still all hooked up to everything. It makes this huge clattering noise, screeching, loud in his ears, so the entire crowd winces and there’s a confused ripple going through the arena, but he doesn’t care. He staggers off stage and he goes into the wings, where Lydia is waiting for him, and she is livid. 

The band comes off and they’re mad, they’re all surrounding him, all around him. Crew, strangers he does not know, and it agitates him. He says, “get the fuck out of my face,” to all of them, shoving them away, “get the hell away from me. Fuck off, get the fuck out of my fucking face.”

Scott grabs him and shakes him, like that’s going to immediately sober him up, or something. But it doesn’t. Stiles has been drinking all god damn day. He’s gone, abducted, not in the building right now, and he just fucked up the show like he swore he wasn’t going to do, he just ruined it, disappointed a room full of people, and everyone is going to know about it. 

The next day, he finds himself groggy and unhappy in a room. The band is here, against their will it would seem. Lydia is here. The label execs are here. They are all staring at him. He made an asshole out of himself. He made himself look bad. He fucked up the show. What exactly happened in Vancouver with Derek Hale? Nothing? What the hell was that? What is wrong with you? What were you thinking? Are you okay? Do you need help? 

He had too much to drink. He just lost count of how many drinks he’d had. It was an accident. Yeah, he was drinking on stage, but it was an accident. Yeah, he’s fine. He’s just having a hard time. His life is so fucked. No, he won’t do that again. He learned his lesson. 

Look, Stiles, we know you’re upset, but you have to get a grip on yourself. Matt Harding sucks, we get it. You’re fucking up. You are a fuck up. You cannot fuck up like this again. You need to stop drinking like that. We can make you stop drinking like that. We can do all sorts of things to you. 

Stiles agrees to everything. They tell him he has to do the shows, no matter how fucked up he is, and he agrees. They say he’s going to Europe whether he likes it or not, and he agrees. They tell him Derek Hale has been trying to contact him, and he sighs and rubs his face and wants to melt into the couch cushions, disappear, end it all. 

When he gets out of the pseudo-intervention, Boyd is standing outside, waiting for him. He says, “what I said to you was so fucked. You didn’t deserve it.”

What Boyd said to him was a huge part of the reason he wound up on that stage unable to even hold his guitar right. There’s no use in denying it. But the thing is, “you were right.” 

“Being right and having a right to say something are two different things.”

“Sure,” he agrees. He is tired of arguing with people about things, tired of really speaking at all. He is hungover as all hell. He needs to be back in California tonight. He has things to do. He has to play the Staples Center three nights in a row this week, but first, he needs to go to his house in Malibu and decompress. 

He knows what they are printing about him. He doesn’t need to look to know. Stiles thinks he has learned his fucking lesson – there is no way in hell he’s going to let himself get that fucked again. It’s one step forward ten steps back, all recovery is, all healing is, and he’s trying his fucking best. So, he lost control one night. 

God dammit, he’s trying. No one gives a shit. They think he’s completely cracked, a lost cause, too far gone to even bother trying on anymore. They gave up on being gentle with him and went directly to threatening him, bringing the label heads in to yell at him to get his fucking shit together. They are done trying to reach him, trying to help him. They’ve gone into attack mode, trying to scare him back in line. 

The truth is, they don’t need to scare him. They don’t even need to be nice to him. Stiles is scared of himself enough. Stiles is mad at himself enough. 

When he pulls up to the Malibu house with Boyd, he’s tucked into the back seat with his sunglasses on, hood up, miserable. He sits up a bit straighter when he sees that Derek Hale is there, leaning up against his car that’s parked in the driveway, arms crossed over his chest. He’s got his own sunglasses on and he looks really immaculate, like he didn’t have to pull a hundred thousand strings just to be here, like he didn’t completely forgo sleep last night because he saw what happened at the show and hopped on a plane the second he could. 

“What is this fucking clown doing here?” Boyd hisses. He moves to unbuckle his seatbelt, like he’s going to leap out and take care of this, get Derek Hale the fuck out of here so Stiles won’t get to talk to him. Boyd, and apparently the label and Lydia and his band, are of the opinion Derek has made things worse. Why wouldn’t they think that? Stiles came back from a trip with him, and next thing any of them know, he’s on a bender. 

Stiles stops him. He says, “please let me see him.” 

Boyd is angry. “This fuckface.”

“Please.”

“Fine,” he says between grit teeth. He pops open his door and says, “but not alone.” 

Right, of course not. They are liable to not let Stiles be alone for the next ten years, if they can help it. Stiles gets out. He’s unsteady on his feet. He drank sixteen quarts of liquor yesterday, and he can feel it in every single inch of his body. He feels terrible. The sun is bright and high in the sky, and really, Stiles just wants to go inside his house and draw the curtains and hide from everyone for as long as he can, but Derek has come all this way. 

When Stiles comes over, Derek does not demand to know why Stiles was not answering his calls. He does not demand to know what’s wrong with him, why he had done that, why he is such a fuck up, why he can’t get better. He just stands there. He straightens up when Stiles starts coming, and he opens his arms up. He does not look judgmental. He does not ask questions. 

“Hi,” he says, as Stiles accepts the hug. “You doing okay?”

“No,” he admits, face in Derek’s chest. “I am ruining my life.”

Derek huffs a quiet laugh. “You aren’t.” 

“I am ruining my fucking life. They are going to put me on lockdown.”

“Who is they?”

“Them,” he pulls out of Derek’s chest, looks him in his face. God, he’s clean shaven, he’s shiny, he has the best clothes, the best hair, and meanwhile, Stiles…is a pile of steaming shit. “What are you doing here?”

Derek smiles at him. “You want me to be here, so I’m here.” 

Stiles does. More than anything in the world. Derek already knows that – probably, he called Lydia and asked where Stiles was going to be, and Lydia likely only told him because she figures, well, things can’t possibly get any worse. Then he just showed up, and waited. Malibu suits him really well. He looks like he belongs here, against the backdrop of the beach, the sun shining against his face, in his eyes, the wind tossing his hair. “You’re upset with me,” Stiles accuses.

“Why would I be upset with you?”

“Dodging your phone calls, for one.”

“I guess that did upset me,” he agrees, lifting a single eyebrow. “Then I saw what happened and figured it had nothing to do with me. You wanna…?” He gestures to Stiles’ door, to go inside. 

“You can’t come in,” Boyd says, no nonsense, dead serious. Derek looks at him, and it’s this look like he wants to finish what they nearly started at the Vancouver airport. “You can stand right here if you want to talk to him.” 

“All right,” Derek says, slow, like he’d much rather be saying something else. He flew all the way out here, and now he’s not even allowed to come into Stiles’ house. And Stiles would fight this, really he would, but nothing good could come from starting an argument between the two of them. 

“You must be thinking I’m a huge fuck up,” Stiles says, scuffing his feet on the pavement underfoot. “I know everyone is thinking it.”

“How much mental energy do you put into not doing that every single night?” Derek asks him, and Stiles closes his eyes and wants to scream, because someone fucking gets it, someone fucking understands him. “It’s all right, Stiles. You were bound to crack. It’s too much for one person,” he shoots Boyd a very pointed glare, before fixing his eyes back onto Stiles. “It’s okay. I wish I could say or do something to make it better.”

Nobody can. It would be nice if Derek was some white knight who came in and magically fixed his life with his dick and a few nice words, but that isn’t how it works. Nothing is going to make any of this better. Stiles simply has to let the time pass. He simply has to get through it. That’s all there is. More trying. More uphill battles. More, more, more. 

All the same, Stiles wants to climb inside Derek’s body and live there. He doesn’t want to be himself, anymore. “Please can he come in?” He asks Boyd, who frowns. Derek seems agitated by the fact that Stiles has to even ask for the agency to let someone into his own house, but he stays quiet, maybe just to maintain the peace. 

“You fucking take one step out of line and I’ll rip your eyes out of your fucking skull,” Boyd snaps at Derek, but he storms to the front door and unlocks it all the same. 

Inside, Derek looks out of place. Stiles is rarely at this house anymore, hasn’t been here in months – the last time he was here, Derek Hale was a nothing person to him. So seeing him there, standing in Stiles’ living room, sitting on Stiles’ tangerine colored couch, is like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs. Boyd does not leave the room to afford them any privacy; he sits down right next to Derek and watches them both, like he’s part of the conversation, even though he’s liable to not say a single word. 

Stiles takes his hoody off and throws it over the arm of the couch. He sets his sunglasses on the coffee table. He sits down. “Shouldn’t you be on set right now?”

Derek shrugs. “People don’t control every single aspect of my life, like they apparently do yours,” this is a pointed jab at Boyd, but Boyd just blinks. “I don’t know how you haven’t gone insane.” 

“Oh, I have,” he smirks. “I have, didn’t you hear? Rock bottom, my friend. Rock fucking bottom. Here we are.” 

Derek sighs and he shakes his head, but he isn’t sure what to say. He can’t really argue that this isn’t rock bottom, but he doesn’t want to admit that it is, either. 

“I cannot believe you came all the way out here just to be with me,” he says, and Derek smiles at him. “You know I’m just going to mope and be a sad sack of shit, right?”

“I thought I had already been pretty clear, that I would do just about anything to get time in with you.” 

A real, genuine smile crosses Stiles’ face. Over Derek’s shoulder, he sees Boyd making this disgusted face, like he can’t believe he’s really sitting here listening to this bullshit. 

Derek reaches out and he takes Stiles’ chin, sighs through his nose. “Even hungover like this, you look so fucking good.” 

“It’s the grungy aspect to it,” Stiles agrees. “I look like a rockstar.” 

“You are one.”

“Well, I played a show so fucked out of my head I couldn’t see straight, so I guess I’m in the club, now.” 

“What upset you so bad?” He asks, and Stiles really doesn’t know how to answer that question. It’s the same things that always upset him so bad, the same things, again and again, and he’s tired of repeating himself like a broken record. “Was it me?”

“No,” he insists, shaking his head. “No. Just…you know, I’ve been pushing things down. And they come back up, like lava, and the volcano explodes eventually. So.” 

Derek nods his head, like he gets it, totally gets it, even though he doesn’t. Derek is mentally sound. Stiles is, decidedly, not. “Maybe don’t push so many things down.”

Maybe. But, where the hell is it supposed to go, if not buried deep in the back of his mind? 

“How long can you stay?” Stiles asks him, and Derek frowns, a bit. 

“Not long.”

“How long?”

“Couple of hours.”

“Oh,” Stiles is disappointed. He wanted more time. He needs more time. A lot more time. He has to play the fucking Staples Center and after the way he behaved in Vegas, he can’t do it without Derek. “You can’t stay…?”

“I can’t, I’m sorry,” he says, and he really is sorry, because he wants to stay, he wants to stay so badly. “I just had to see you, even just for a little bit.” 

Stiles wants to cry, but he has nothing left in him to cry out. Derek is too nice to him. Everyone else had yelled at him, treated him like a fuck up, like he deserves nothing that he has. But Derek went out of his way just to be here, with him. Like Stiles is worth it. Even though he’s not, he couldn’t be. 

“I miss you,” Derek tells him with an honest look on his face. “I miss having you at the house. Waking up with you.” 

“Derek,” Stiles warns him, voice low. He shouldn’t be saying things like that. 

“I’m not going to lie,” he shrugs his shoulders, like he doesn’t see the big deal. “Don’t you miss me?” 

Stiles feels his face get hot, so he looks away. “Yeah.” More than he would care to admit.

**

Stiles is forcing a salad down his throat in his dressing room, all by himself. He has been hiding in Malibu for the past couple of days, ever since Vegas, ever since Derek had to fly back to Vancouver to finish making his movie. He hasn’t talked to Lydia, or the band. He hasn’t checked social media. He hasn’t done much of anything. Just drying up in Malibu.

He drank, don’t get him wrong. A shot in the morning, a glass of wine with a lonely dinner he barely touched. But the thought of getting blackout again petrifies him. The thought of being like that paralyzes him. He hasn’t had anything to drink all day today, and it makes him anxious to think it, but he ignores the feeling, focusing on forcing himself to eat just so he won’t collapse up there. 

There are three loud knocks. Stiles expects it to be Boyd, or a crew member. But it’s Scott. Stiles hasn’t really seen Scott in forever, it feels like, when he looks up and meets eyes with him from the couch he’s planted himself on. He looks the same, a little wary, but the same. He closes the door behind himself and then he hovers there, hesitating. “Uh, hi,” he says.

Stiles says, “hi.”

Scott hovers some more. “Salad.”

“Yup.”

“Looks good.”

“It’s all right.”

“I’m fucking up as a friend,” he blurts out, and then he takes in a deep breath, shakes his head, like this isn’t how he wanted to do this at all. “I’m fucking up as a friend, man.”

Stiles swallows what he’s got in his mouth and frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” he comes farther into the room, sits down on the table right next to where Stiles’ salad is. So they’re close, really close, inches apart. So Stiles has to make eye contact with him. “Let me talk. Don’t interrupt me. I mean, you’ve been, like, walking around with a megaphone, pretty much, yelling into it that you’re struggling, and I’ve just been…mad.”

“Mad,” Stiles repeats.

“Mad. I was mad at you.”

“Well, I wasn’t a very good friend to you, for a long time,” he says, and Scott frowns, shakes his head. 

“Matt pretty much made sure you weren’t my friend.”

Stiles puts his fork down. “What are you trying to say, here?”

“I’m trying to say I’m garbage, dude. Vegas wouldn’t have even happened, it wouldn’t have even gone down like that, if only you had someone on this fucking tour who you could actually talk to. You remember, we used to tell each other everything. Now, it’s like, who’s this guy?”

Yeah, Stiles knows. Now, they barely even look at one another. They used to do everything together, go everywhere together, share the bus, share hotel rooms, to the point where people were convinced they were fucking. 

“And that bullshit with the label, that was so shitty. How they just yelled at you. Like, oh, that’s fucking helpful, let’s scream at him and he’ll stop drinking himself to death. Great idea.” 

“Yeah,” Stiles agrees, smiling half heartedly. 

“I don’t know what happened with Matt, but I’m done asking,” he looks at his shoes. “You don’t need to tell me. It’s wrong of me to demand that you do. I…I can guess.”

“No, you can’t,” he almost laughs, but then it’s not funny. It’s really not funny. 

“It doesn’t matter,” he waves his hand. “My point is, I’m ready to not be sucky. I want to be your best friend again. So, then, you can rely on me. I know Lydia and Erica are sort of, uh, the worst. And everyone else is a dumbass. But I’m here. I’m not mad at you. I don’t think you’re a fuck up, like they said.”

Scott is the oldest friend that Stiles has. He’s the only person who knows him, really knows him, as much as one person can really know another. They have kissed before, drunk at a party in high school, but only because Stiles hadn’t come out yet and Scott would kiss pretty much any moving thing when he’s that drunk. Scott was there when Stiles played his first bar show. He was there down to learn whatever instrument he had to, to help Stiles make it. He bent over backwards to help Stiles get a record deal. 

Matt tried to rip that friendship apart, because he felt like Scott and Stiles were secretly fucking, or that they secretly wanted to, because he never got what it was like to have an actual fucking friend. Maybe he didn’t succeed as well as Stiles thought he had. 

“And I know Derek is your boyfriend and I was shitty to him.”

“He’s actually not my boyfriend.”

“Boyd said he flew all the way here just to see you for three hours after your meltdown,” he blinks, like this obviously means that Stiles and Derek are madly in love, or something. 

Stiles shakes his head. “He’s just nice.”

“That’s pretty nice,” Scott hedges, like he thinks Stiles is being silly, like of course Derek is his boyfriend. Stiles wishes. Boy, he wishes. Right now, Derek is hundreds and hundreds of miles away, on a movie set, kissing someone else. Stiles is not chill, like actor’s boyfriends generally are. It irritates him Derek and Josh are going to kiss. It’s fucking weird, to boot. “You ready? It’s almost time.”

Stiles eats what he can of his salad and then throws the rest out. He goes out and they hand him his guitar. They’re looking at him, everyone, the crew, the band, like they’re studying him to make sure he’s not wasted. He isn’t. He stands steady, he goes right to his place. He goes up on the platform and he plays the opening song, and he doesn’t fuck up the chords or play the wrong song or sing the wrong words. 

During the break between songs, the band expects him to just wave his hand for the next one, but he doesn’t. He walks up to the microphone, and he smiles. It’s thin, but it’s a smile. “I am not drunk,” he says, and the crowd cheers for him. Well, there’s always some people he can count on to congratulate him for doing the bare minimum, he figures. “Uh, I – I know people probably have said a lot about what happened in Las Vegas. I mean, fuck them, but that was sort of shitty.” 

He hasn’t really spoken to the fans in so long. It’s almost strange to hear his speaking voice echoing back to him in this giant space, to know that people are just standing there listening to him talk, are interested in what he has to say. 

“You know, when I wrote this album, I was in a very low point,” he tells them. They’re quiet. “Sometimes, getting up here and singing about it night after night takes its toll on me mentally. I don’t think that makes me the worst person alive if I can’t do it sometimes. Everyone, someone in specific I guess, always wants to say it’s because I’m just a fuck up.”

They know he’s referring to Matt, and they love it when he says shit things about Matt Harding, so they clap and cheer. It’s entertaining to them, because they think he’s just dunking on a shitty ex, but really, it’s a lot more than that. It’s okay if they don’t get it. They don’t need to. They listen to him and they trust what he says. 

“I just wanted to say, I’m not going to do that again. I know that sucked. I’m done doing that. Uh, anyway,” he turns to the band, and they’re all staring at him, shocked, like they can’t believe he said much of anything to the crowd for the first time nice tour started, let alone said what he actually said. He gestures, so they start in on the next song, move on with the rest of the show.

He does his first meet and greet of the tour after the first Staples Center show. He’s bizarrely nervous, because who really knows what his fans want to say to him at this point. He wonders if any of them are mad at him, for fucking up so much and so publicly, again and again. Or if they’re upset, or disappointed. He wonders if they’ll yell at him and say he’s a sell out, or something, for writing about Matt the way he did. 

Nothing like this winds up happening. The fans are all sort of just…typical. He’s met thousands and thousands of them at this point in his career, so he can honestly say he’s seen it all. He gets the teenaged girls who cry at him and ask for hugs and nervously ask if they can get more than one picture in case the first one turns out bad. He gets the guys who come pretty much just to flirt with him, which is always nice, because some of them are pretty good looking. He gets the odd younger kid with their parents, gay kids who look up to him, and none of them, not a single one, says anything shitty to him. He doesn’t know what he expected. 

That the whole world hates him now or something, even in spite of the fact that he’s playing a sold out world tour. It just gets…loud. The negativity is always louder than anything else. Most of these kids probably don’t even give a shit he was so wasted he couldn’t play Nashville the other night. They likely thought it was cool, or something, which is depressing in its own way. 

When he gets out, the girl from his fan club who had been tasked with taking the pictures says that Lydia wanted him to know there’s someone waiting for him in his hotel room. Stiles immediately knows that it’s Derek Hale, so he thanks her and hurries back to his dressing room to gather up what few things he had brought with him. He’s playing another two nights here, so they actually set him up in a pretty nice place instead of just leaving him to rot on the tour bus – he’s imagining that Derek flew all the way here again because he seems to have a thing for grand romantic gestures, and Stiles does not mind.

It’s been a long time since someone did grand romantic gestures in his honor, and it’s flattering. More than that, it makes him feel really important, which for him right now, is sort of essential to his mental health. Feeling important is the key to feeling like he doesn’t have nothing, no one, nowhere to turn. 

He heads back to the hotel with Boyd in tow, and he’s nervous. He jiggles his leg up and down, bouncing it incessantly, chewing on his thumb nail. He gets nervous every time he knows he’s going to be seeing Derek, even after all these months that they’ve been spending time with one another. Something about him always makes Stiles’ stomach do backflips. 

He arrives to fanfare, because they know he’s staying here. Cameras flash, even as he ducks his head and pulls his hood up so they can’t get a good picture to sell. In the elevator, he wonders if Boyd will be willing to actually leave them alone for a while, or if he’s even allowed to leave Stiles alone anymore. They’ve cracked down on him immensely, tracking his every fucking move, ordering people to be around him at all times to make sure he’s not going off the deep end – so he almost sort of doubts it. Stiles has half a mind to not give a shit and have sex with Derek right there in front of him, anyway. 

He fumbles his key card out of his pocket, swipes it until it clicks, and bursts inside. When he comes into the suite and sees who’s sitting there, all of the blood drains out of his face and he freezes. That is not Derek Hale. Not even close. 

It’s his father. Stiles doesn’t move, stuck still in his spot, while his dad stands up from the couch and looks nervous, uncomfortable, unsure of what to say or do. They have not spoken to each other, let alone seen one another, in well over two years. That is a very long time to go without speaking to one’s father, and Stiles has imagined time and time again what he would say to his dad if they ever did speak to each other again. 

But standing here now, with him right there to listen, Stiles is speechless. He doesn’t know what to say. 

“You have no idea the strings I had to pull to get here,” his dad says, his voice is low. He’s angry. He’s really really fucking angry, Stiles notices, and he has every right to be. Stiles all but shoved him out of his life with no explanation, no warning, and then proceeded to turn into a stranger, and his dad had to watch through social media and TMZ. “You have no idea how impossible it is to get to you.”

Stiles has some idea. To get to Stiles, you have to go through at least four different levels of security at any given time – it’s near impossible, and Stiles sees to it that it is. If there is someone he doesn’t want to see, then they don’t get to see him, period. Lydia arranged this. Stiles is sure of it. She thinks she’s doing him some big fucking favor, locking him into a hotel room with his father.

Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t. 

“Well,” his dad says, because Stiles still has not spoken, or moved. “You look…you look skinny and tired.”

Stiles is skinny and tired. His dad, meanwhile, looks sort of the same as always, if a little bit more worn around the eyes. “Yeah, I…” he clears his throat. “I’m always underfed and underslept on tour.” 

They stand there, staring at each other. Behind them, Boyd is helping himself to the mini bar, so mini bottles of liquor are tinkling and wrappers are crinkling, in the silence. 

“The last time I saw you, it was…Christmas. Christmas, two years ago.” 

Stiles remembers that. He had gone home, all the way back to Beacon Hills, and he’d brought Matt with him, which turned out to be a huge, gigantic mistake. It was a disaster. Matt and his dad did not get along, not even a little bit, because Matt was an arrogant, pompous asshat and acted like being there at all was beneath him. His dad is not a subtle man, and he doesn’t pretend to like who he doesn’t, so they butted heads and got into arguments and Stiles was in the middle of the entire thing. 

“The next thing I know, my calls are going to voicemail and I can’t get those people who work for you to even answer my e-mails.” 

He’s referring to Lydia and the band, most likely. Maybe even some people at the label. He had told them all he and his dad weren’t speaking, and Stiles guesses they all took that very seriously. 

His dad puts his hands on his hips. He’s giving Stiles a very serious look. “I know it was him,” he says, tone even, steady. “I just can’t figure out what or why.”

“He’s not in my life anymore, so does it matter?”

“Yes it matters,” he snaps, and he’s mad. His dad being mad at him makes him feel like he’s five years old again, so he shrinks down a bit, chastised. “My son doesn’t speak to me for two years, four months and six days, doesn’t tell me why, doesn’t send a note, nothing, so yes, it fucking matters, Stiles.” 

Stiles looks to Boyd, maybe for help, maybe just because he’s in trouble and he wants someone to back him up. But, Boyd is busy eating a bag of M&M’s, acting like he’s not listening, maybe just to afford Stiles the sheer idea of privacy for this conversation. “He just – you guys hated each other, and I thought –“

“Don’t lie to me,” he shakes his head. “Do not lie to me, kid.” 

“I’m not lying,” he insists. “I’m not lying.” 

“You think I haven’t been paying attention to what’s been going on with you?” He’s moving closer, closer still, so they’re only feet away, two feet, at most. “You think I can’t put the pieces together?” 

Stiles swallows the lump in his throat. “He just thought you were going to try and break us up,” he offers, and his dad shakes his head again. He turns, moving back to the couch and the coffee table, where he’s got what looks like a case file lying there in wait. He picks it up, starts waving it in Stiles’ face, like it’s evidence of something, even though Stiles has no clue what its contents are. 

“You think I haven’t spent every waking second of these past two years trying to figure out what was wrong with you?” 

“Dad, I don’t want to talk about this,” he tries to move away, to get away, but it’s no use. His dad blocks him, no matter which way he goes. 

“Frankly, I could not care less what you do or do not want to talk about,” he growls at Stiles, and Stiles hates this. He wants to leave. He thinks about it, but he knows Boyd would stop him before he got anywhere, and he knows his dad would chase him, and he can’t really hide. There’s people outside who know he’s here, who are waiting to take his fucking picture. 

His dad opens up the folder. Stiles hadn’t really known what to expect – it was not candid pictures of himself, that is for absolutely certain. He blinks at them, as his dad lays them all out on the coffee table for him to look at. They’re big, blown up, full sheets, printed off a computer it looks like. 

“Look at this,” he points to one, a specific place on the picture, and Stiles leans over it.

It’s a picture of him from a while ago. He doesn’t recognize the place, the time, the day, because frankly in his days with Matt, it all sort of started to blur into a messy nightmarish haze he can’t make heads or tails of. Matt is there, in the picture too, and Stiles looks away, focuses in on what his father is pointing at. “I don’t see –“

“Here,” he points, again. Stiles looks closer. 

Stiles’ hair, his mouth, his sunglasses. Maybe the faintest hint of a purpling bruise underneath the glasses, barely visible to the untrained eye. Stiles blinks and keeps his face impassive, blank, as he looks up at his dad. “I don’t know what you’re –“

“Look at this one,” he goes to the next one. Another picture, Stiles and Matt, holding hands, another unplaceable day, another barely visible hand-shaped bruise on his arm. “And this one.” A big bandage wrapped around his arm, from that night, from when he got the scar. 

“What is your point?”

His father looks at him, and he knows. He knows. There’s no use in denying it, but Stiles can’t help himself. “You tell me right now,” he says, serious as a heart attack, “if he put his hands on you.”

“He didn’t.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying, you’re grasping at straws here,” he gestures to the pictures, shaking his head, “some bruises and a cut on my arm, and you’ve cooked up some ridiculous –“

“I’ve got dozens of these,” he pulls some more out, fanning them, and Stiles is flabbergasted to see how many he’s dug up. How much time he must have spent, every time new pictures would come out, zooming in and obsessively searching, searching, searching. 

“You came all the way out here just to throw these in my face?” He’s angry, upset. He reaches out and pushes all the pictures off of the table, sending them fluttering and flying to the floor. “You were an asshole to my boyfriend, that’s why I stopped fucking talking to you.” 

In the background, Boyd is watching, listening, silent. 

“I’ve never liked any of the jackasses you’ve dated, I don’t remember you cutting me out of your life for having voiced that opinion in the past!”

“I want you to leave,” he points to the door, his finger shaking as he does so. “I want you to get the hell out. You can’t come in here and say shit like this to me, I’m not a kid anymore.” 

“God _dammit_ , Stiles,” he bangs his hand on the table, so loud and hard it makes Stiles flinch back, take two steps away, shaken. “What is the matter with you? I’m your father, I’m your god damn father, the only family you have in this world, and you just shut me out! Because now you’re such a big rockstar, you don’t need me anymore, is that it?” 

Stiles shoves his fists against his eyes and squeezes them shut, breathing in and out, deep. “I can’t have this fucking conversation with you.”

“Just tell me the truth. Tell me the truth. He did, didn’t he? You can tell me.”

“Dad,” he moves away, when his dad tries to come closer. “You’re being fucking crazy. You come here and you attack me and you accuse my ex-boyfriend of –“

“It’s true,” Boyd pipes up. Both men turn to look at him, and the room is silent. “I saw it with my own eyes.”

“Boyd,” Stiles warns. He turns to his father. “He doesn’t know what he saw.”

“I came in and saw him on top of Stiles with his hands around his neck.”

“He doesn’t know what he saw,” he repeats again, more forceful. 

“Then Stiles told me it had been going on for over a year and begged me not to tell anyone about it.” 

His father is silent, still. He knew it, he had seen it in all those pictures, did the math, added up the facts, because that’s what he does. But knowing the details of it. How long it went on. How it ultimately ended. He is quiet. He looks to Stiles, who’s just standing there opening and closing his mouth, trying to come up with another lie, something else to say. 

He can’t do this again. He cannot go through this again. He can’t, not with his dad, not his dad, who’s going to be so disappointed, who’s going to be so angry with him. He can’t do it. He shakes his head and he says, “it wasn’t like that.”

“Probably, he figured that you’re a cop and would know what was going on, so he forced Stiles to stop talking to you,” he shrugs his shoulders, slow, deliberate. 

Stiles wants to hit Boyd in the face so fucking badly. He wants to grab him and ask him who he thinks he is, going around telling people the one thing he’s ever asked Boyd to not go around telling people. He could say that Boyd signs NDA’s, he can’t tell anyone anything what happens in the privacy of Stiles’ own home, it’s all there in contracts, and he could sue him for saying this shit. He could do all of those things. 

Instead, his lower lip wobbles. He’s backed into another corner, again. 

“Oh my god, kid,” he says, and he tries to move closer. Stiles flinches back, on instinct, shaking his head. He doesn’t want to do this again. He doesn’t want to say anything. He’s sick of saying things about it, he’s sick of it, he wants to scream, he’s finished with it, and he’s barely even gotten started. 

Finally, Stiles lets his dad close enough to touch him. He wraps his arms around Stiles’ body. Stiles feels ten years old. He feels tiny. Small, afraid, nowhere to turn. Shame curls up hot and sick and ugly in his chest, and it is a familiar feeling, one that he’s let himself dive into before. 

“I didn’t know what to do,” he says, and his dad asks him no questions. 

Because he knows. He knows everything. He has seen all of this before.

**

Derek answers on the second ring, like he always does. He sounds a bit tired, but he’s got a smile in his voice. “Hi, Stiles.”

“Hi,” he says back. He rubs at his face as he glares out his hotel room window. The beach is close. He can smell the ocean. “Um, do you have, like, a second? To talk? Or are you busy?” 

“Not busy at all. I’ve got tons of seconds to talk.” Stiles imagines that Derek is sitting at home in his living room with Snowball, watching television and drinking a beer. He can picture himself there, too, because he’s done that exact same activity with Derek before in that exact room. He wishes he were there instead of here. “Is everything okay?” 

Stiles has been quiet for a few seconds too long. He clears his throat. “Uh, not really,” he laughs, though it’s not very funny. It’s a very tired laugh, devoid of all humor. “Can I talk to you about something?” 

“I’ve already said you can,” he says back. Right, he’s already agreed to this. 

“Well,” Stiles closes the curtain and hides from the sun, the whole world, sitting down on the edge of his bed and pressing his free hand to his face. “I saw my dad last night.”

“No shit,” Derek sounds very surprised to hear this. He knows that Stiles has not spoken to his father in a long, long time. 

“I think Lydia got him here and put him in the hotel room and – and I initially thought it was going to be you, but she ambushed me with him instead.”

“You guys talked?”

Oh, big time, they talked. As much as the two of them have ever really talked. Stiles’ dad is a good dad, he’s just sort of – he’s a cop. He is rough around the edges. “He was just… he was just my dad. You don’t know him so you don’t know what that means, but he’s just a really tough person.”

“What happened?” 

“He had all these pictures he’s been collecting. You know, of Matt and I. And he could see – well. He just put two and two together.” 

Derek is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “there are pictures?” 

“Not like what you’re thinking. They’re nothing, just barely visible marks that may or may not be bruises. He knew they were nothing. He was just trying to smoke me out. Then Boyd started fucking talking.” 

“Oh,” he’s surprised by this. As far as he’s concerned, Boyd never says or does very much of anything. 

“Just – telling my dad what happened. Now we’re not speaking.” 

“You and your dad?” 

“Me and Boyd.” After everything, Stiles was angry with him. Of all the people on earth that did not need to hear that shit, that Boyd should’ve keep his mouth shut around, his dad is at the top of the fucking list. His father, of all people, did not need to hear from Stiles’ bodyguard what happened to him. It was horrible. Not only that, but Stiles doesn’t care how Boyd feels about it – he asked him on a personal level to please keep that shit to himself, and he went and did that. Stiles was beyond angry. He was livid. 

He wanted to throw Boyd out of the room, but of course, he couldn’t do that. He’s not even technically Boyd’s actual boss. The label is his boss. And they have given him explicit instructions to keep a very close eye on every single move that Stiles makes. Even if Stiles had screamed at him to get out, that he’s fired, he’s done, it would’ve been just words. He has no genuine authority over the guy. 

Instead, Stiles has opted for the silent treatment. It’s not nearly as effective as it would be on somebody else, seeing as how Boyd enjoys the silence, but it’s not about whether or not Boyd prefers Stiles quiet anyway. It’s about the statement. Stiles has said not a word to him in 24 hours. He does not intend to be saying anything to him in the future. 

“So you mean, now your dad knows.” 

“It’s terrible,” he repeats. The word is not big enough. “It’s the worst possible thing.” 

Derek is quiet for a second. He says, “is it?” 

“Yes, Derek. Do you have any idea how it feels to –“ 

“I don’t, but, you know what my opinion on all this is.” 

Yes, he had made it perfectly fucking clear when Stiles first told him, on the couch in Derek’s house. He had said it was insane Stiles was keeping the secret, it was nuts to carry it around, it was a bad idea, it could only end poorly, but Stiles had ignored him. “It’s mine,” he says, pointing to his chest. “It happened to me. It’s not a debate for everyone to decide what to do about it.” 

“I’m going to say something you’re not going to like, now,” Derek starts, and Stiles closes his eyes and shakes his head. “You are not very good at taking care of yourself or making appropriate decisions regarding your well being.” 

“You’re right, I don’t like that.” 

“I’m not going to lie.” Derek always says that. Like he cannot tell a lie to save his life, even if it will help him avoid an argument, even if it will keep the peace – he will not lie. It’s comforting sometimes, to be around someone so honest. But other times Stiles just wants him to shut his fucking mouth. “I don’t agree with how everyone around you treats you like a little kid. But you’re not seeing things clearly.” 

“You’re pissing me off,” Stiles accuses, so Derek sighs again. “I called because I wanted you to make me fucking feel better, not shittier.” 

“All right. I’m sorry. You know I’m right, but I’m sorry I upset you.” 

“You know, you’re not my boyfriend. You don’t get to just, like, tell me how to do things.” 

“Boyfriends in general aren’t supposed to tell you how to do things.” 

Right. Normal relationships, and what have you. Stiles wouldn’t know very much about all that. 

“If I were your boyfriend, I’d say that your dad knowing is a good thing because it means you have someone else to talk to about it aside from just me, who you push away, and just Boyd, who is a fucking idiot.” 

“Oh, my dad doesn’t talk,” he waves his hand. “He’s a real, you know. Man. From another generation. He does not talk about things, because he’s not a woman. You know. That kind of a guy.” 

“Yikes,” Derek says. He likely cannot imagine having that kind of a family dynamic – his entire family is women, women, and more women. It’s gotta be why he’s a half way decent communicator, even though he’s got the look of a guy who would refuse to buy his girlfriend tampons. “So what the hell did he say?” 

“Not much,” he admits, staring down at his carpet. “He was talking about, uh. Pressing charges. Taking the pictures in as evidence.” 

“Well, good.” 

“Derek. These pictures are nothing. They are not evidence. It’s nothing. If I tried to take this shit into a courtroom they’d laugh me out of it. These are pictures you and the entire world has seen, and no one noticed anything.” No one noticed anything for a long, long time. Stiles was screaming and no one heard him. “It is a useless conversation, but it’s the only one he knows how to have. You know. He’s all, well, what’s going to be done about this? What are you going to _do_ , Stiles? Because he only really knows how to _do_ things.” 

“What’s wrong with that?” 

“Because I have nothing. You can’t accuse someone of something with just your word. He should know that.” 

“Baby,” he starts, this tone in his voice like he’s going to say something else that Stiles does not like, but Stiles cuts him off. 

“He doesn’t get it. I don’t want to do something about Matt, I want to do something about _me_. Me, okay? I can’t function if I’m not drinking, that’s a fucking problem, I have problems, me, and no one seems to give a shit about that. So long as I keep touring and making the label money, who cares? He tried to tell me I need to go to rehab, dude. _Rehab_. I could’ve fallen off the couch from laughter. You know what would happen if I went to the label and said, hey, cancel the tour boys, I’m heading to the Malibu rehabilitation center for a few months? They’d take me to court.” 

Derek is quiet on the other line. Maybe, he isn’t sure what to say. 

“It was just terrible, is what I’m saying,” he sighs, shakes his head, looks at the floor. “I wish you were here, even if you just came to say things I don’t like.” 

“I’m almost done filming,” he says. “Sooner than you know it I can be at your beck and call.” He would, too, is the thing, Stiles is sure of it. If he weren’t working he’d be dropping everything and coming here right now. He’d come to the shows and he wouldn’t be shitty afterwards. He’d take Stiles places so he wasn’t just locked on his tour bus all the time. “The wrap party is this coming week.” 

Stiles wishes he could go. “Can I ask you about something? If you promise not to get mad.” 

“When have I ever gotten mad at you?” 

That’s a good point. “Well, I’ve never asked you about this, so I don’t exactly know what your reaction will be.” 

“I will not get mad at you,” he promises. 

Stiles hesitates. He fiddles with a loose thread on his jeans. “How come everyone says you’re an asshole? Like, where do those stories … come from?” 

Derek keeps his word and does not get mad, not even a little. He actually laughs. “Because I am an asshole. Stories are true.” 

“I know you,” Stiles challenges. “You’re the nicest guy who’s ever fucked me in my life.” 

“Not always.” 

“You’re being evasive.” 

“I’m being honest. I’m an asshole.” 

“You yelled at PA’s.” He says this, as though it is a statement that could not possibly be true. 

“Once or twice.” 

Stiles frowns and scrunches his face together. He really cannot imagine that happening. “You punched a hole in some guy’s windshield for talking to your girlfriend.” 

“Yes.” 

“You’re messing with me.” 

“No, I’m not,” there’s a smile in his voice. “I am an asshole. I have a serious anger problem.” 

“No, you don’t.” 

“Stiles,” he laughs on the other line. “Yes, I do. I’m not pulling your leg - it’s not a very funny joke even if I were.” 

“Then how come – how come you’ve never once even – I’ve never even heard you raise your voice.” 

“Well,” Stiles can tell just from his tone that it’s kind of a long story. “Around the time I got arrested for, yes, punching a hole in someone’s windshield, my agent made me go to therapy. You know. Anger management.” 

“Whoa,” Stiles blinks. He must have missed that memo. The whole car punching thing was years and year ago, now, at least five. Maybe more. He never heard about Derek going to anger management. Maybe because that’s not as interesting a story as him punching cars. “So you’re crazy.” 

“Well. I think I’ve gotten better.” 

“I think so too,” he agrees. “I can’t even really imagine you angry.” And there have been opportunities for him to get mad. Really mad, even. When Stiles says shitty things to him, Derek just blinks or smiles or seems to not even let it bother him. When Boyd had come toward him looking for a fight, Derek had just stood there, calm. When Boyd said he wasn’t allowed to come inside, he had been irritated, yes, but quiet and still. He apparently has a pretty strong grip on his temper, now. 

“Being angry all the time like that used to drain so much of my energy. I’d be exhausted and miserable all the time. Now, I don’t know. It’s been so long since I’ve felt out of control like that.” 

“So it worked? The therapy.” 

“Oh, big time. I mean, I’m not perfect. But I’m not angry anymore.” He pauses for a moment. “Maybe you should try therapy.” 

Stiles can’t help it – he laughs. “Right.” 

“Now that you asked me something, can I ask you something? And you’re not allowed to get mad, either.” 

“Sounds fair.” 

“What did you even like so much about Matt in the first place? You keep saying you loved him, even when – you know.” 

Yeah. Stiles did really love him. Even after the first time he hit Stiles in the face, even after the hundredth time he hit Stiles in the face. He can understand why this might be baffling to people. It baffles even him, when he thinks about it too long. “Well. First of all, he has a massive dick.” 

“Oh, don’t be funny.” 

“I’m actually not. It’s huge.” 

Derek is quiet for a moment. “You’re trying to make me jealous, that’s all.” 

“Oh, fuck no, I don’t play that game anymore. Making my boyfriend jealous on purpose for the fun of it - I’ve learned my lesson, believe me.” 

“Your boyfriend,” Derek repeats. Of course that’s what he picked out of the sentence. 

“You know what I mean. He seriously had the biggest dick I’ve ever seen in person. The sex was crazy when we first got together.” 

“Stiles,” he warns, because whether Stiles is trying to make him jealous or not, he is. 

“And beyond that, he was – you know. He was working me over. He was manipulative. After he’d hit me he’d be so nice to me. That’s how it works. You know. Abuse.” 

“I actually would not know, Stiles. I have no idea what it’s like.” Oh, right. Not everyone in the world has been in that situation before, thank god. “And, for the record, I don’t think Boyd did anything wrong. It’s nice to see him actually stepping up, for fucking once. Not that you want my opinion.” 

On most things, Stiles really does want Derek’s opinion. It’s why he had called him in the first place. And he knows Derek is right. It’s not fair for him to be this angry with Boyd, because what Stiles had asked him to do and made him do was unfair, too much of a burden. He’s likely been standing there watching his own decision to do as Stiles wished make everything worse, time and time again. That’s too much. 

Stiles frowns. “I want to be done. You know? Like fast forward to when I’m not a fuck up. All this needs to be over.” 

“You’re not going to like this, but. The best way to be done with something you’re holding onto is to just stop holding onto it.” 

He knows what Derek means. That if he wants it to be over faster, he needs to actually do something about it. He needs to tell the truth, at the bare minimum to his friends. Those around him who don’t understand why he’s being this way, why he’s out of control. _Why_. They don’t know why. Maybe things would get better if they did. 

“Wow, you really did go to therapy.” 

Derek laughs, his good, genuine laugh. After bidding each other goodbye, Stiles lays his phone down in his lap and stares at his closed curtains. He thinks about Derek’s house in Vancouver, the backyard with the water and the beach right there – he wants to go back and run headfirst into the water like he never did when he was actually there. Now that he doesn’t even have the option of doing it anymore, he wants it more than anything in the world. The water in Vancouver. 

The thought gives him a familiar pause. He hasn’t had this particular feeling in months, months and months, not since he walked out of the studio for the last time after finishing the record. It’s a welcome friend, because he hasn’t written a single fucking thing and not writing drives him crazy, is at least part of his problems right now. But he can’t write that song.

He cannot under any circumstances start writing songs about Derek Hale. That is a slippery fucking slope, one that he will never be able to climb back up. If he writes about Derek, then he’s not going to be able to stop, and more songs will come, and then Lydia will get her hands on them, and it’ll be a whole fucking thing. He doesn’t want it to be a whole fucking thing. He and Derek are fine, right now. He doesn’t want to fuck it up. Seems like the music always makes everything worse, anyway. 

He ignores the siren’s call of his guitar in the corner of the room.

**

Stiles tries the self-care thing. He has no idea what self-care actually is, but he has it on pretty good authority that it is not drinking himself into a stupor every night while eating cheez-its by the handful in bed.

He gets up early in the morning. Or, his alarm goes off early in the morning, giving him the option of getting up early in the morning, and he hits the snooze button instead. He tries to eat breakfast even when he’s not hungry, sometimes just a bowl of cereal that he plays with more than actually eats. He buys skin care products and takes them all out of their packaging, slathering them on his face, frowning at how stupid he looks in the mirror. He goes and gets his hair cut, buys new clothes to wear on stage, tunes his guitars himself instead of expecting it to magically be done for him. He calls his dad in the afternoons and has awkward, stilted conversations, that always boil down to his father saying he’s going to do something about this whole thing and Stiles asks him not to, he wants Stiles to go to rehab, Stiles tells him he can’t do that, over and over. But at least they’re talking. 

These things are nothing, in the grand scheme of it all. Stupid little habits he gets into. They don’t do anything for him. They just give him something to do. Maybe that’s what self-care is. Just giving him something to fucking do. 

In San Diego, the crew orders pizzas before the show, and he makes an appearance. Everyone still side-eyes him when they think he’s not looking. They’re looking for a bottle of whisky or a flask or evidence that he hasn’t slept or eaten in days – he ignores them, gets himself two slices, and then sits by himself in the corner, pulling his phone out. 

He stares at the screen and then he pulls up google. He types in _Derek Hale and Stiles Stilinski._ This is not self-care. It’s just him being a complete fucking dumbass. Article after article comes up, pictures, on and on, and Stiles blinks. He knew that people were talking about the two of them, so he shouldn’t be as surprised as he is. But still. There’s so fucking much. It would appear the general consensus of the public is that they’re an actual couple, and why wouldn’t people think that? Stiles goes to the image search and starts scrolling.

Tons and tons of pictures of them. There’s the pictures from when they were eating tacos in New York; there’s one of Stiles leaning in to whisper in Derek’s ear, one of them walking together, Boyd just a figure in the background. Then there’s tons of them in Vancouver, at the boardwalk, on the water. He pulls up one where they’re looking at each other, right in the eyes, and he stares at it for a long time. 

It’s a good picture. Derek looks at him different than anyone has ever looked at him before. He saves it to his phone. 

Because he’s already opened up the Pandora’s box, he decides there’s no going back now. He types in _Derek Hale’s exes_. He sees pictures of Derek and Jennifer first, because that was likely the longest relationship he had, and he makes a face. She seems odious even just in pictures, honestly. He keeps looking and he finds out Derek has dated a lot of people. More than Stiles was ever aware of. Movie stars, directors, social media influencers, name after name, some of them Stiles recognizes, some that he doesn’t. 

He hates what he sees, but he keeps looking all the same, because he’s a masochist. He finds a picture of Derek Hale kissing somebody else that isn’t Stiles on a yacht, and he gets mad. He frowns at it and furrow his brow, like how dare Derek Hale have had a life before he met me. He’s being a little bitch, sitting here nursing his attachment to Derek like it’s not a problem, not something that he should be squelching down at all costs. 

A plate slaps down on the table next to him, startling him into shutting his phone off to a black screen and sitting up, like he hadn’t been looking at anything at all. 

Scott sits down, shovels half a piece of pizza into his mouth in one go. “You looking at porn?”

“No,” Stiles’ face heats up.

“What’re you looking at?”

“Uh –“ he tries to come up with a lie, but his brain is blank. All he can think about is the picture of Derek kissing someone else. “…Derek’s exes.”

“Oh,” Scott lifts his eyebrows, chewing with his mouth open. “You mean, the guy you’re not dating.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. Him, indeed. 

“You mean, your friend. You’re interested in his ex-boyfriends.”

“And girlfriends,” he corrects, so Scott nods, like it doesn’t actually matter. 

“That’s something friends do,” he snorts. “I told you, he’s dated a fuck ton of people. But you guys are just friends, so it doesn’t matter who he’s been with before. Because, you know. You don’t give a shit.” 

Scott knows beyond any shadow of a doubt that Stiles gives several shits. Tons of shits. He knows Stiles better than anyone, and he knows the tell tale signs of Stiles becoming obsessed with the person he’s seeing, seriously or not. 

“This guy is nice?” He asks, and Stiles nods his head. “Then how come you don’t want him to be your boyfriend?” 

That is a loaded question. There are a lot of answers, most of them he cannot say to Scott, not out loud, not here, not now. Stiles can’t be with Derek, because it wouldn’t be prudent. It would be a dumbass thing for him to do, less than two years after freeing himself from the shackles of the worst relationship of his life, to leap right into bed with Derek Hale and write songs about him and obsess over him and go everywhere with him, and…all that sort of stuff.

Does he want to do all of that shit? Oh, big time. It’s half of what he thinks about. But whether he wants to or not is irrelevant, because it’s just like Derek had said. Stiles is in no position to be making decisions about his own life right now. He’s letting everyone else decide for him. The tour, the shows, the records, all of it. Even Derek, he can’t choose for himself. 

“I’m just, you know,” he picks at his pizza, pulling pepperoni off just for something to do with his hands, “not crazy on the idea of being with anyone for real. I mean, look at all my past relationships. I evidently don’t know how to pick them.” 

Scott makes a face. “So, you’re just never gonna date again?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“That seems dumb,” he doesn’t usually mince words, and now is no exception. “Derek seems okay, actually. I mean, people say shit things about him, but they say shit things about you, too.” 

Stiles is tired of talking about this. He eats just so he doesn’t have to respond, chewing slow and deliberate, bite after bite. Scott actually does know how to be quiet, especially if he’s got something to shove into his face, so they sit in comfortable silence for a minute or two. There’s a bit of a commotion going on behind them, people talking louder and laughing, but Stiles tunes it all out. 

Then, Erica is coming over to their table. She’s laughing, sort of breathless and high, shoving her phone into Stiles’ face. “You have got to see this,” she says, a crazy smile on her face – it’s maniacal, like she’s laughing at someone else’s misfortune. “You’re going to love this shit.” 

Stiles bites into his crust and squints, leaning in closer to get a better look. As soon as he reads the headline, he rips the phone out of her hand, heart sinking into his chest. 

“What is it?” Scott demands, leaning over Stiles’ shoulder with an incredulous smile on his face, chewing directly in Stiles’ ear. Stiles stares, stares, shakes his head, baffled. 

_Matt Harding punched by Derek Hale in West Hollywood._

Scott’s laugh is abrupt and loud. He pulls away, shaking with laughter, while Stiles just sits there staring. He scrolls down, moving past the article that likely talks about how Matt is Stiles’ ex and Derek is Stiles’ current squeeze and isn’t it all just sooo juicy, getting to the real meat of the thing – the fucking video. 

He immediately starts it up, so it takes over the entire screen. It’s security camera footage, overlooking a bar that Stiles doesn’t recognize. Someone must have paid thousands and thousands of dollars to get their hands on this fucking thing, and Stiles does not even want to think about that, does not even want to know how this wound up out and circulating. It’s in night vision, a bit blurry, but he can see enough, and so can anyone else, to be able to make out faces. 

Derek is just standing there. Josh Perry is there. They’re standing there talking to one another, drinking, having a fine enough time. This is probably the wrap party. It had been just last night, and Stiles remembers Derek mentioning it in being at a bar in WeHo, remembers him saying Stiles was welcome to come, but Stiles couldn’t, because he had a show. He’s mystified as to how any of this has anything to do with punching Matt Harding in the face, but then, he gets it.

Matt appears in the shot. He has absolutely no fucking clue if Matt just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or if he was perhaps deliberately there, knowing Derek Hale would be there, too. He approaches the bar, and Stiles hates to have to look at him. He clenches his jaw, watching Matt say something to the bartender, who quickly moves out of frame, likely to make his drink. Matt stands there. He looks over and sees Derek. Stares. 

One thing he is sure of is that Matt knows Derek is fucking Stiles. He probably keeps tabs on Stiles’ whereabouts, what he does, where he goes, who he goes there with. He knows who Derek Hale is. He knows. Matt was always of the opinion that if he couldn’t have Stiles, then nobody could, and he shared this opinion very often. 

Derek feels the eyes on him, so he turns, and then he does a double-take when he sees who it is. This is like watching a fucking car crash in slow motion. Stiles puts his hand over his mouth, watching as the two of them make eye contact with one another. Derek goes still, still as a statue, and Stiles has learned to recognize that as one of Derek’s learned habits from therapy. Do not react. Do not lash out. Do not leap at the first sign of conflict.

Matt looks right at him and says something. Stiles wishes he could read lips, wishes that more than anything else in the world, because the second he says it, Derek is not still anymore. The hit is fast and immediate, right in the face, hard enough that Matt staggers back into the bar stools, knocking several over. Before anyone has the chance to do anything about this, Derek grabs him again, throws him to the ground, smashes the glass that had been holding his drink on the ground there, too. Stiles can’t see enough to see if the glass made contact with Matt’s face. Probably, it did. 

There’s a lot of movement then, as other people become aware of the fight and jump in, separate them, and the video ends abruptly. 

Stiles puts the phone down. Scott is still laughing, hysterical, while Erica pats Stiles on he shoulder and says, “I bet that felt good to see, huh?”

**

Stiles has three days before he has to be on a plane to London. He leaves right after meet and greets in San Francisco, skirting around his security because he doesn’t want to have to explain to anyone where he’s going – he grabs Boyd and barely says anything to him. Just that they need to go, Stiles is getting on a flight to New York, non-stop from LAX, and Boyd seems to know exactly what all this is about, because he asks no questions, demands no explanations.

Boyd helps him duck Lydia and everyone else. They get on the plane, and Stiles could sleep, but he spends the entire flight, as long as it is, fuming. He’s so angry. He is so fucking angry. He knows that Derek is in Tribeca because Derek had told him that immediately after the party, he was going back to New York, that he would be in New York when Stiles got back from Europe. They had a date set up and everything. 

When they pull up outside of Derek’s familiar building, Stiles gets out of the car with Boyd behind him, and heads up the steps. He pulls open the apartment building door, and storms inside. Derek’s security is there. They’re baffled to see him. One of them says, “Mr. Stilinski,” to him, in surprise, holding his arms out as if to stop him from coming any closer.

“Stiles,” he corrects, and receives a mystified blink in response. “Is he in there?”

“We weren’t expecting you.”

“Is he in there?”

“Uh,” he hesitates, and Stiles goes for broke. 

He jerks around them, leaps at the door, and bangs on it with his fist. “Derek Hale, open this god damn door,” he shouts, while the bigger guy wraps his arms around Stiles’ waist and tugs him away from the door. He kicks his legs, indignant, unhappy at being manhandled, while Boyd gets mad and shouts something about taking their hands off of Stiles right god damn now.

In all this chaos, Derek opens up the door. He looks out at the scene. Stiles, flailing in one of his security guards’ arms. Boyd getting ready to punch said security guard in the face. He says, “what the hell is this?” 

“Let me down,” Stiles yells, and Derek backs him up.

“Jesus, you’re fucking manhandling Stiles Stilinski,” he barks, so the guy immediately loosens his grip and lets Stiles down on his feet. Stiles does not wait for Derek to get his bearings, or for Derek to process what’s just happened. He moves forward, and he’s got this tingling in his hand to slap Derek in the face, but he won’t – settles for angrily shoving past him into the apartment. 

Boyd gives death glares to Derek’s security, passes them by and comes in as well, much to Derek’s evident chagrin. Before Derek’s even got the door shut, Stiles is shouting at him. “What the hell is your problem?”

“What?” Derek glances at the two men outside, like maybe he has intentions of going ballistic on them for treating Stiles that way, but he opts for shutting the door, instead. 

“You fucking got in a bar fight with my ex-boyfriend in WeHo.”

Derek pauses. He glances at Boyd, as though for confirmation this is seriously what’s going on, but Boyd offers nothing, his face blank. “You flew all the way out here –“

“What are you thinking?” He shouts, holding his arms out. “Are you fucking nuts?”

“Let me get this straight,” he laughs, a short, abrupt laugh, “you got on a plane from LA to come here to New York because you’re mad that I punched Matt in the face?”

“Yes.”

“You are mad at me because I punched Matt Harding in the face.”

“I’m fucking pissed, not mad, I’m big time fucking pissed.”

“Because I punched Matt in the face after I explicitly told you several times that I would.”

“What?” Stiles rears his neck back, confused. “You never told me that you’d – you never fucking said that!”

Derek moves closer to him. “Stiles. I told you again and again. Given the chance, I’d fucking rip that guy apart.” 

“Uh, I thought you were just being, like, a tough guy,” he says, incredulous. Because, yes, Derek did say numerous times he was going to kill Matt, he’s going to ruin Matt’s life, but that’s just something people fucking say. It’s just something men say all the time, it’s posturing, it’s comparing dick sizes, it’s not a real fucking thing. 

“What are you angry about? I’m having a hard time understanding this.”

“Because that is fucking insane behavior. I saw the video,” he puts his chin in the air, his hands on his hips, and tries to look bigger, as though his anger could give him the few inches he’d need to be at Derek’s height. “What the hell did he even say to you, to get you that riled up?”

Derek rubs at the back of his neck and looks away, like he doesn’t want to say it. Then, Stiles needs to know, so he prompts him again, more forcefully. Derek sighs. “He said, hey man how’s it going.”

Stiles stares at him. He stares, waits for more – that’s it. Matt said hey man, how’s it going, and Derek’s response was to punch him and drop a bar glass into his face. “Are you a fucking psychopath?”

“What are you mad about?” He asks, for only the tenth time since Stiles came in here. 

“I’m mad because this is my business,” he points to himself, his chest, “it’s not yours to go ballistic over. I don’t want him fucking getting angrier than he already is, did you even think about that? Getting punched by the guy I’m fucking isn’t going to make him happy!” 

“Stiles,” he puts his hands together, looks Stiles dead in the eyes, “I am going to beat the hell out of that guy every single fucking time I see him.”

“Put your fucking dick away for three seconds, would you?”

“This isn’t about being a fucking tough guy, I can’t help it,” he gestures, vague, shaking his head. “I’m not going to apologize, if that’s what you’re after. I’m sorry it upsets you, but I’m not just going to let him go.”

Stiles looks at Boyd, who’s got nothing to say. He just stands there, hands on his hips; he is probably still lividly angry that Derek’s guys out there had the balls to touch Stiles like that. Stiles rubs at his face and takes a short walk; a quick pace across Derek’s living room, the couch where they’ve had sex, the coffee table, all of it familiar. 

“You did not seriously fly all the way out here just to say you’re mad because I knocked your abuser out.”

“I did, actually,” he rubs at his jaw, frowning. “I thought you went to therapy and now you’re a gentle giant, what happened to that?”

“I’m not a gentle giant,” he corrects, a short laugh. “I told you. I have a serious problem. Now, he’s my fucking problem.”

“No. He’s not. He’s mine,” again, Stiles points at himself, but Derek just shakes his head. 

“No,” he argues. “You won’t do anything about it.”

“Because I don’t want –“

“Stiles, we could go around and around in circles. I’m not sorry. I’ll do it again the next time I fucking see him, too.”

Stiles sets his jaw. He knows that Derek is serious. He knows that there is probably nothing that he could say to get Derek to relax, to stop being so fucking nuts, to just be on Stiles’ side. Honestly, Stiles has to admit that he gets it. If Stiles found out that one of Derek’s exes hit him or anything of the sort, Stiles isn’t so sure he’d be able to just see them and not do anything to them. He might not be able to beat the hell out of people like Derek, but he would definitely throw a drink. At least. “You’re being a hypermasculine fuckbag,” Stiles says, and Derek shrugs his shoulders. 

“I thought that’s what you were into.”

Stiles glares at him, even as Derek smiles. He thinks it’s funny that Stiles is mad at him. He’s thought it was funny since the start of all of this. “You’re supposed to be all calm and docile, I thought.” 

“I am. I do the work every single day to not lose my temper. I made the conscious decision to hit that guy. It wasn’t out of my control. I just wanted to.” 

He just wanted to. “I’m not impressed,” he says, and he means it. “It does not, like, woo me.”

“He better hope he never comes within a hundred feet of you,” Derek says, like Stiles hadn’t spoken. “I’ll fucking punch his teeth out.” 

This is not a facet of Derek’s personality that Stiles is particularly familiar with. He knows the Derek who doesn’t know how to eat tacos or how to cook, who loves dogs and goes for runs and is good in bed, who kisses Stiles all soft and gentle and holds him and takes him out to nice dinners. Derek had said that this part of him existed, and it’s not like Stiles hadn’t believed him – he just…well. He didn’t know what he thought. That Derek wasn’t multifaceted, that he didn’t have a dark side, that he didn’t only have glamour muscles. He knows how to use them.

They taught him how to fight for Dead By Sunrise. Yes, those are just movies, and yes, the stunts were coordinated and the fights were choreographed. But he took lessons. He is strong and big. He knows how to hurt people. It’s mind boggling to Stiles, because Derek wouldn’t hurt a fly, wouldn’t lay a finger on Stiles if his life depended on it – but…

“Are you really going to stay mad?” Derek asks, looking Stiles up and down. Stiles is still in the clothes from the show, exhausted, hasn’t slept, hasn’t eaten. He probably looks like hell, but Derek looks at him like he likes what he sees. “You flew all the way here, and you’re going to stay mad?” 

Stiles puts his hands on his hips. “Yes.”

“Stiles.”

“I cannot believe you’re not sitting in a jail cell, frankly.” 

“He’s not going to press charges. What is he, a little bitch?”

Stiles pinches the bridge of his nose. As much as he likes men, as much as he enjoys men who are all big and strong, this is something about them he could honestly do without – the fucking posturing. 

“I mean, I know we’ve already established he’s a little bitch, since he beats on people half his size just to feel powerful, but he’s not going to fucking do anything.”

Derek is actually right, about that. Matt isn’t going to press charges, because, yes, it makes him look like a little bitch. Matt is very serious about not seeming like a little bitch. It’s got to be some kind of weird tic of his from growing up gay in baseball – this need to prove he’s tough, he’s strong, he doesn’t need the cops to solve his problems for him. 

“You look tired,” Derek says to Stiles, gesturing up and down. “You want something to eat?”

“I’m still mad at you,” Stiles snaps, so Derek will take him seriously. Derek smiles at him, like, _yes, of course you are, baby, that’s fine_. 

“I’ll order you something to eat. What would you like?” 

Stiles frowns. The sheer idea of a pancake occurs to him, and his stomach growls, and he really fucking wants one – but he’s still trying to hold onto the last thread of his anger. He knows Derek isn’t going to say he’s sorry or admit he was wrong, or any of it, because he explicitly said he wasn’t going to, and he keeps his word, is not a liar. He apparently seriously keeps his word, even when it seems like he’s just messing around, because they’re in this situation right now.

He also knows that his anger is misplaced. Derek really hadn’t done anything wrong; punching Matt is just what the guy deserves. He deserves worse, honestly. And Derek just is who he is; it doesn’t matter if Stiles is annoyed by male posturing, that’s the kind of fucking guy that Derek Hale is. It’s half his appeal, it honestly is, and Stiles doesn’t get to only like the sides of it that benefit him. 

Stiles says, “pancakes,” like he’s mad about it, and Derek orders him pancakes to be delivered. Immediately afterwards, he excuses himself out the front door, likely to go yell at his security for mishandling the Stiles situation so fantastically, leaving Stiles and Boyd standing here all by themselves. 

They haven’t actually spoken since what happened with Stiles’ dad. There have been one word sentences and the occasional grunt or nod, but otherwise, it’s been frosty cold between the two of them. Stiles doesn’t really have much to say to him, and Boyd doesn’t really have much to say in the first place, so they could stay locked in this impasse for likely the rest of all eternity. 

So, it is a surprise, when Boyd actually does speak. “I know you’re angry at me,” he starts, and Stiles frowns at him. 

“That is an understatement.” 

“Well,” he starts, then jerks his chin at the door, where Derek had just left. “I’m not going to apologize either. You can stay mad forever and I won’t apologize. It was the right thing to do. You’ll see that, someday.”

Stiles doubts that, very much. All this experience has brought down upon him is pain, and more pain, from start to finish. From the very first time Matt puts his hands on Stiles, all the way to this exact second, everything about it has been horrible. He cannot imagine a future in which he’s happy, in which he’s looking back on these days and feeling foolish for ever having been so reticent to tell anyone what happened. 

“Stay mad,” Boyd shrugs, looking away. “Derek is right, too.” 

So, they’re ganging up on him. Stiles sits down on the couch and wants to tell Boyd to shut the hell up, but he’s tired, and hungry, and he came all this way and he feels silly. He just wants to eat his pancakes in peace. Really, it’s all he cares about. He rubs at his face and he looks at the floor, shaking his head. “It was wrong of me to ask you to keep that secret,” he admits, ashamed, unable to meet Boyd’s eyes. “I should’ve – well. I don’t know what I should have done.” There was no right answer, at the time. Stiles was paralyzed, stuck, locked in his apartment, afraid to leave, afraid to do anything, he couldn’t do anything, not a single thing. There was nothing good he could’ve done. Nothing. 

“You should have let me go to the cops.”

“No,” he shakes his head. “It would’ve made everything worse.” 

“Worse than this?”

Stiles doesn’t know how to answer that question. Right now, his situation is such – he’s locked in a world tour singing songs about his abuse under the guise that Matt was just a regular old asshole, not a fucking nightmare, he can’t back out, he can’t leave, he can’t do anything, and every single day Matt plays baseball and makes millions of dollars and likely torments other people, and all of this is because of Stiles’ silence. All of this is only happening because Stiles made the decision to let it. 

But he can’t allow himself to believe it’s entirely his fault, because then he’ll start the drinking again. And nothing good comes from that. 

Derek comes back inside before either of them can say anything else, and he smiles. “I’m sorry he touched you like that,” he says to Stiles, who waves his hands like it’s fine. “Are you still mad at me?” 

Stiles shrugs his shoulders. “I’m upset.”

“Okay,” he agrees. He sits down right next to Stiles on the couch and he smiles some more, putting his hand on Stiles’ knee. “You came all this way. I thought I wouldn’t be seeing you until after Europe.”

Stiles shrugs, again. 

“You didn’t come all the way here just because you were mad.”

“Yes I did,” he argues. 

Derek gives him a look, that says he doesn’t believe that, not for a second. “You came to see me.”

“To yell at you. To tell you you’re thinking with your dick again.”

“To see me,” he tacks on, and Stiles blushes and looks away. In spite of himself, he smiles, and then, Derek knows he’s right, and that he’s won. “You can’t stay mad at me, huh?”

“Well. You got me pancakes.”

“Right,” he grins, all teeth. “I assume you snuck out and are in big trouble.”

Oh, the hugest. Stiles has turned off his phone, but he knows they’re calling, and calling, and going insane, and leaving him screaming voicemail messages, because he’s not allowed to just take off. He’s especially not allowed to just take off and fly across the country when he’s expected to be in Europe in a matter of days, when he’s in the middle of the tour. They’re going to rip him a new asshole, considering how much trouble he just got in for screwing up the Vegas show. 

Stiles just shrugs his shoulders. “Whatever.” He’s getting a little tired of being everyone’s pet they can order around. 

“I want you to feel safe with me, Stiles,” Derek says, putting his arm around Stiles’ shoulder, kissing him on the forehead. “You can always come to me when you need to. Even if it’s to bust my balls.” 

“Okay,” Stiles agrees. Then, he bites his lip and looks away, thinking about how he’s almost written songs about Derek, what Derek would think about that, if he’d hate the idea the way Matt hated the idea. “…are you really going to hit Matt again, if you see him?”

Derek looks at him, and he nods his head, big smirk on his face. 

“You know, he’s a big guy. He could hurt you.”

Like that’s funny or something, Derek laughs out loud, whole body shaking with it. “I’m not afraid of him, trust me.”

“Maybe _you’re_ not,” Stiles mumbles, frowning, looking at the floor. “What if he thinks I like, set you loose on him? Or I’m telling you to do that? Or, if he gets angry and takes it out on me, because he knows he can’t beat you up?”

Derek rubs at Stiles’ back. “I’m not going to let that happen,” he says, and he sounds so serious, like he could actually do anything about it – Stiles almost believes him. But Stiles has tried to hide from Matt, to calm him down, to play the part he wanted Stiles to play, and none it ultimately mattered. When Matt wanted to hurt him, he would. No matter what Stiles did to stop it. 

“I’m afraid,” he admits to Derek, who frowns and doesn’t like the sound of that. “I’m afraid of him. That’s why I won’t tell, because…”

“Stiles, you don’t have to explain yourself,” he pushes a strand of hair out of Stiles’ forehead and looks him in the eyes. “In your own time.”

Yes. In Stiles’ own time. It may be never. It may never happen.


	6. The Cliff’s Edge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize this took so long to get up - it was an incredibly difficult one to write, and evermore did not fucking help at all with productivity lmfao. Also it’s hilarious, the bulk of this was written before I even knew evermore was a thing, but when I was editing it I noticed I used the phrase “fucked in the head” a whole ton in this chapter, ironically.

Stiles has a dream that Derek gives him, of all things, a potted tree. He holds it out to him and smiles, and for some reason, dream Stiles is ecstatic over receiving this gift. He loves it. He thanks Derek and cradles the thing against his body, grinning from ear to ear. Stiles has never in his life wanted a tree. He does not have a green thumb. He thinks it’s a lemon tree. Those are hard to take care of, he’s heard. 

Then, out of nowhere, Matt shows up. He takes the lemon tree out of Stiles’ arms and he smashes it on the ground, so the pot breaks, the soil goes everywhere, the lemons all roll off the branches away into the darkness, gone forever – Stiles shouts and jerks away, watching almost paralyzed as Matt pushes Derek on the ground too. Derek smashes like he, also, is a lemon tree. Broken pot, dirt, branches, leaves, lemons, that’s all that’s left on the ground in front of him. Stiles cries and asks him why he would do that, why he would do something like that, and Matt, bizarrely, smiles at him.

He says, “so we can be together,” with this eerie grin on his face. 

Stiles is woken up by Boyd shaking him, again and again, shouting in his face that it’s just a dream, he’s screaming, he’s got to wake up. Stiles shoots up in bed and he’s sweating bullets, his hands are shaking. Boyd is sitting on the edge of the bed blinking, an upset and shocked look on his face. Stiles takes in a deep breath, closing his eyes as he realizes he was dreaming. 

There are no lemon trees. Derek is not a lemon tree, he’s not smashed on the ground. It’s fine. It had felt real, so real he could smell the lemons in the air, could feel the soil through his fingers, but it wasn’t. It was just a dream. 

“I thought you stopped having those nightmares,” Boyd says this in an accusatory tone, as though it’s Stiles’ fault for having the dreams at all. 

Stiles pushes the covers off of his body and sighs. “I did, for a while.”

“Why are you having them again?”

“I don’t know,” he waves his hand, wiping the sweat off of his forehead. He pulls a shirt on. The clock on his bedside table says three in the morning, and he has a flight at eleven, and should probably be trying to get some sleep. But he knows he won’t be able to sleep again. He’ll just think about lemons. “Lots of thinking about it, I guess.” 

Boyd is quiet. He watches Stiles put shoes on his feet, watches Stiles grab his pack of cigarettes from the dresser across the room. “You should see a therapist,” he suggests, and Stiles shakes his head resolutely. He does not need fucking therapy. He just needs to quit drinking so much, he just needs to finish this tour, he just needs a good night’s sleep, that’s all. No therapist can do any of those things for him. Only he can. 

Stiles does not even grace that statement with a response. He pulls open the sliding door to the hotel balcony, stepping out onto the metal frame, slamming it shut behind himself. He leans over the balcony’s edge overlooking the city, lights his cigarette, and frowns. He shouldn’t be smoking. He’s got shows coming up. He’s got a flight to London in the morning. 

They had been angry at him when he came back from New York. They told him that they wanted to fire Boyd, because he was obviously a bad influence on him, and obviously could not be trusted, since he went along with Stiles’ whim to fly across the country. Stiles had begged them not to, told them he wouldn’t do that again, he would go on tour, he’d finish the tour, no more problems, no more issues, he swore up and down. 

Truthfully, Stiles could not do this tour without Boyd. Even when Stiles hates him or resents him or can’t stand him, Stiles also knows that he needs him. There is no one else on earth that he implicitly trusts with his safety, no questions asked, not a single doubt in his mind that Boyd would do anything to keep him safe. Doing it without him was never an option. He made that clear to them, the fucking label, and Lydia, and all of those people who control his life. 

He smokes and watches the headlights on the highway buzz by, in the distance. Sometimes, he pretends he’s a normal person who could just go downstairs and get in a car, start driving, get on the highway, and keep going. He’d drive and drive, all night long, through the morning, as far as he could go, and no one would tell him he had to come back. He pretends that he never learned guitar. He has a job in an office building, working at a computer, with a headset, and a water cooler, and staff meetings. He has a midsized car. He lives in a residential neighborhood. 

It’s unbelievably spoiled of him, to have everything in the world that anyone could ever want, and to say he doesn’t want it anymore. Before Matt, Stiles never felt like that. Stiles felt like the luckiest person on earth, getting on stage on every night, making music that people liked and thought was good, being on television, getting his picture taken. 

It makes him angry to think that Matt made him hate his dream. Stiles has felt a lot of things towards Matt – afraid, nervous, sad, miserable, lonely, and even love. Anger is a new one. It curls up inside his stomach and he welcomes it, because it feels good, to be angry with him, instead of afraid of him, for once. 

He finishes his cigarette and puts it out in the ash tray, leaning his elbows down on the railing. Before he can talk himself out of it, Stiles reaches into the pocket of his pants and produces his phone. He calls Derek. 

Derek answers later than he normally does. His voice is groggy, on the other line, suggesting this call has woken him up. “Stiles?” He says, sleepy.

“Sorry,” Stiles says. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

Derek says, “it’s not even six in the morning, yet.”

“It’s even earlier, here.”

“What are you doing awake?”

Stiles hesitates. He looks at the road below his feet, quiet, empty, no one out and about. Just the street lights, and the distant sounds of the highway. “I had a bad dream,” he confesses, because why not? He tells Derek damn near everything else, so why not this, too? “You gave me a lemon tree.”

“Ah. And you are irrationally afraid of lemon trees. That’s why it was a bad dream?”

“I have absolutely no strong feelings towards lemons, their trees, or trees in general,” he smiles, in spite of himself. “Which is why it was so strange. You were wearing that one green shirt you have, you know? The one I said I liked.”

“I know the one.”

“…and you gave me the lemon tree, and, I like, loved it. I went nuts over it. Like you were giving me a new car, that’s how I acted.”

“This still doesn’t sound like a bad dream.”

Stiles rubs at his face with his free hand. “Well. Then Matt came. He took my lemon tree and he threw it on the ground so it smashed and – and all the lemons disappeared.” 

Derek is quiet on the other line. 

“…then he, like. He pushed you and you were a lemon tree, too. You smashed and there was dirt, and…” he takes in a deep breath. “I don’t want him to….”

“He’s not going to,” Derek tells him, totally resolute. “It was just a nightmare.”

Stiles feels like it wasn’t. It feels like it was prophetic, or something, like this is all ultimately bound to happen in reality. Obviously, Derek isn’t a sentient lemon tree, but it means something, he is sure that it does. It wasn’t just his subconscious trying to scare him. It means something. “When I asked him why he would do that, he said – he said so that he and I could be together again.” 

Matt would do that. Stiles would not put it past him. He doesn’t doubt that Matt would get rid of everyone that he’d have to get rid of, everyone that would stand in his way, if it meant he’d get to have Stiles, again. 

Derek sighs. “Stiles. It was a nightmare. I’m not a lemon tree.” 

“The lemon tree was a metaphor, it represents something.” 

“Like?”

“God, I don’t know. Like, starting over. I think. Or, healing. Like the lemon tree is my future, my chance at one at least, and then he comes and smashes it, because obviously, I can’t have that.”

“You can’t have a future?”

He looks at the ground, some more. “I don’t think so. I can’t…get to that point. That’s what the dream means. I think I can have it, and I hold it, and then he takes it all away.”

Derek says, “you think of things that way, huh?”

“What do you mean?”

“You think everything is a metaphor, or nothing just is what it is, but it represents something else. That must be the writer in you. To me, it probably just means you saw a ton of lemon trees while you were in California and your subconscious just stuck them there in your dream, because it had the thought of a lemon tree readily available.”

“No,” he is sure of it. “Dreams always mean something.” 

“Well, in that case, I would never let him take your magic metaphorical lemon tree, Stiles.” 

Stiles scratches at a dry spot on his arm, frowning deeply. “What about you? What if he tries to take you away?”

Like this is an incredibly ludicrous thought, Derek laughs. “No. Not me, baby. Never.” 

Stiles rubs at his face and he wants to believe that, more than anything, even when he’s not supposed to feel that way. Lately, he’s been thinking more and more that he just wants Derek and he doesn’t care if he’s not supposed to or if he’s not ready for a relationship or if he shouldn’t do it. He just wants Derek so bad. He wants to believe Derek will always be there. It’s hard to imagine, because up until this point in his life, men have just come and gone. 

Derek being a constant seems way too good to be true. 

“I’m sorry I woke you,” Stiles says after clearing his throat, standing up straight. “I just – I wanted to hear your voice. You know. Make sure your pot wasn’t really smashed and you weren’t just a pile of dirt on the ground somewhere.” 

“I am very much not a potted tree,” Stiles can hear the smile in his voice. “You’re excited for Europe?”

“No,” he admits. He hasn’t lied to Derek about anything in so long, telling the truth comes natural to him. “I wish I were in Vancouver, with you.”

“You have no idea.”

**

Stiles loves going abroad. Normally, he’d be high energy, stoked to play such cool venues, thrilled to go to Ireland and France and Germany where, in meet and greets, he gets to see all kinds of different people.

This year, he is sullen and quiet on the plane ride. He stares out the window instead of sleeping, frowning and feeling alone. Boyd is here, and the band, but no Derek to speak of. Stiles thought about inviting him to tag along since he isn’t technically working right now, but then he knew it wouldn’t be a good idea. Spending an entire three weeks in Europe with the guy would just be another way to solidify Stiles’ obsession with him, and Stiles really needs to work on, if not entirely getting rid of the attachment, at least not actively nursing its health and strength. 

Doesn’t change the fact that he wants Derek to be here more than anything else in the world, though. And it is only made worse by the knowledge that if Stiles had asked, Derek would have said yes. In a heartbeat. 

In the hotel in London, Stiles stares out the window and mopes. When Boyd comes in to drop his bags off on the bed, he likely expects Stiles to say not a word to him, too busy drowning his sorrows in a tumbler of bourbon to bother talking to Boyd at all.

Instead, Stiles clears his throat. “Hey, I got you the weekend off in Paris,” he starts, and Boyd freezes, like that surprises him. “I’ll have Frank come along with me. I just figured you might wanna hang around with Erica and do, I don’t know, couple stuff. It is Paris after all, and I know – you know. Having to spend every waking moment with me doesn’t afford a lot of romantic time for you two. So.”

Boyd blinks at him. “Thanks,” he says. He’s surprised.

Stiles shrugs and turns back to staring out the window. He thinks Boyd will leave him without another word, as is his character – Boyd stands there for a moment too long. It’s long enough that Stiles turns back to him expectantly. 

“Can we sit?” He gestures to the bed, and Stiles nods, taking the six steps necessary to get there. He sits, and Boyd sits, right next to him.

Silence. The ice in Stiles’ glass tinkling. 

“I don’t say this enough,” he starts. “Or, ever. But Stiles, I love you like a brother,” he puts his arm around Stiles’ shoulders, squeezing, pulling him against his chest. “And you don’t know what it’s been like, having to sit here and watch you suffer in silence.” 

Stiles does not want to talk about this, but he knows that Boyd rarely speaks, rarely says his thoughts or feelings – and that when he does, he’s serious, he means it, and he will be listened to. There’s nothing Stiles could say to get him to stop talking, so he just sips his drink and nods, quiet. 

“I’ve fucked up. I haven’t always made the right decisions. But it’s not like this situation is so fucking normal. I’m not crazy about Derek Hale.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. Hasn’t that been well enough established?

“I don’t know how great of an idea it is for you to be in relationship with a man that has gone to anger management and who has that kind of a problem.”

To tell the truth, Stiles had never for one second thought that Derek’s anger problem was an actual problem. At least, not as far as Stiles is concerned. He’s never found Derek unpredictable, or dangerous, or prone to outbursts. Derek has not flown a single red flag. And Stiles has learned how to see them, trust that. 

“Derek would rather eat glass than touch me,” Stiles says. He knows it’s true. He knows it. 

“Well. It’s good you feel that way. I don’t feel that way. I’m watching him.”

“Okay,” Stiles hides his smile by taking a sip of his drink. 

“It won’t be like last time,” he promises. His tone is harsh and serious. He means it, with every single bone in his body. “I won’t let it happen again, not ever again.” 

“It’s a good thing you’ve got nothing to worry about with Derek.”

“Uh huh.” Boyd stands after giving Stiles some pats on the back. 

“Why don’t you go tell your crazy girlfriend you can take her to the Eiffel Tower or whatever the hell next week?”

“Where’s your crazy boyfriend? I figured you’d want him to come along.” 

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Stiles corrects. It’s robotic, when it comes out. Truth is, he is sick to death of having to fucking say that. He wishes he didn’t have to correct anyone. He wishes that were the truth. 

“Uh huh,” he says, same tone he had used before. Disbelief coloring every inch of it. 

Europe actually isn’t that bad. Or, it’s not god awful, like the tour in the states had been. He’s far enough away from where the bulk of his trauma lives that he feels like he can forget, at least for little pockets of time. He’s not stuffed into the tour bus every night, alone with his liquor and Easy Mac, but put in fancy hotels with room service. He practices his self-care regimen religiously, always eats breakfast, always tries to stop himself from drinking too much. He and Scott are talking and they hang out, go out to eat, go look at cool places, spend time just sitting in the hotels watching movies. 

Stiles had forgotten how much fun Scott actually is to hang out with. He’s clueless and guileless. He suggests doing the ice cream challenge at a creamery, where they have to eat a million scoops of ice cream to get up on the wall, makes it about halfway through, and then pukes directly into Stiles’ bowl. Stiles laughs out loud, so hard he keels over, crying – it’s the hardest he has laughed in months, and months. Maybe years. 

In Paris, he actually has fun on stage. The set list is different for the European tour; the entire album isn’t on it, for starters. The two singles are, and Nashville of course, and a couple of odd picks, but the rest are songs like Sea Monster and Free At Last that are a lot more high energy. The crowd is insane, loud, especially when he gets on the mic and dusts off the little bit of French he actually knows. 

It is not a miserable nightmare. Stiles is thankful for these little mercies. 

When he gets off stage, he hands his guitar off and rips his ear piece out. He’s sweating, because he had actually moved around up there, for once – there’s a stack of towels on a table meant for him and the band and the crew, so he grabs one and starts sopping himself off, chugging water. 

Scott says, “uh, someone’s here to see you,” patting him on the shoulder, pointing a finger off somewhere to their left. 

Stiles looks, and, unbelievably, Derek Hale is standing there. 

He says, “oh, my god,” and moves without thinking about it. He grins, literally grins so hard his face hurts, moving as fast as he can without actually running to get to where Derek is standing in the wings. 

Derek barely has the time to open his arms for a hug, before Stiles is leaping on top of him, nearly knocking him over. Stiles wraps his arms around Derek’s neck and squeezes, a breathless laugh spilling out of him before he can help it. “What are you doing here?” Stiles demands, pulling away to look him in his face. 

He looks good. He is clean shaven, hair done, dressed in black. Stiles wants to lick him. 

“I’m surprising you,” he says, and Stiles beams at him. 

It’s a grand romantic gesture. He flew all the way to Paris just to come see Stiles’ show, to be standing back here with Stiles, to be here. With Stiles. Stiles isn’t used to these gestures, but he could get used to them real fucking quick, that’s for certain. 

“You saw the show?” Stiles clarifies. He’s still sweaty, so he wipes himself off some more, even though he certainly already got some on Derek’s clean shirt. 

“I sure as shit did. It was unbelievable.”

“You have to say that,” Stiles smiles at him, cocking his head to the side. “If you don’t, you might not get laid later.” 

“Luckily, I mean it, too,” he smiles back. So then, they’re just standing backstage, smiling at each other like a couple of fucking idiots. “I haven’t seen you play like that in a long time.” 

“It’s just been so much more tolerable,” he shakes his head, as though in disbelief. “Vegas really was rock bottom. And you know, once you’re down there, you can really only go up from there.” 

Derek nods his head, like he knows, he agrees, he too has been at rock bottom. Derek’s rock bottom was when someone made a lascivious comment about his girlfriend at a bar and he went nuts and punched his fist through a car. The pain and damage he must’ve done to himself, the fact that the girl likely broke up with him because that shit is too crazy, his agent calling him and telling him he’s out of control, everyone talking about him in the tabloids like he’s nuts…Stiles never considered that he and Derek have that much in common. Or at least, they’re both familiar with the concept of failing. And then getting back up and trying again. 

“How long can you stay?” 

Derek shrugs. “As long as you want me around.” 

Stiles wants to say, forever. Forever, forever, forever. “You can have dinner with me?” 

“If you’d like.” 

“And come back to my hotel?” 

“Sure.” 

“And spend the night?” 

“Whatever you want.” 

Stiles wants Derek to ask him to be with him, for real. And he wants Derek to take him away from tour and crowds and all that bullshit, just to be alone with him. Stiles wants Derek to kiss him and hold him and be nice to him, and this feels like a lot to ask for, for some reason. 

“I have to shower and dress and go meet some fans,” he says in a rush. “But I’ll have them take you to my hotel room and I’ll meet you? Unless you’re staying in your own place. Of course you are.” 

Derek smiles. “I was pretty much banking on getting invited to stay with you.” 

Stiles’ heart does a somersault. “Oh good,” he smiles, feels silly. “Well, okay, I’ll …I better get going. I can’t believe you came here.” 

“I figured maybe you’d like to see I really am a human man and not a sentient lemon tree.” 

Stiles laughs. He laughs really hard. It’s not that funny, but he feels bizarre, like he’s drunk without actually being drunk. As he turns to head back to his room to get ready for the meet and greets, he realizes that the feeling isn’t drunk, not at all - it’s happy. 

Genuine, real happiness. It’s been a very long time since he’s felt that way. It’s an unfamiliar feeling. 

In the meet and greets, one of the girls that he meets gushes at him in broken english about how she thinks he and Derek Hale are so cute and she can’t believe that Derek was at the show tonight and the picture that he posted was such a good photo. Stiles says, “the picture?” 

“On Instagram,” she scrolls on her phone, pulling the app up and shoving it into Stiles’ face. “Here.” 

That’s a picture of Stiles, all right. From the show. Stiles had not realized how close to the stage Derek had been, hadn’t noticed him out there at all, but he had to have been pretty close to get this particular shot. It’s got a black and white filter on it, just Stiles and his guitar, his neck bent, his profile, his hair, the spotlight on him. Stiles hasn’t seen a picture of himself in so long that didn’t make him feel violated, in some way, or like people were seeing more than they deserved to see. 

This one isn’t like that. It feels personal. It feels like another of Derek’s big romantic gestures. 

The caption is just the goat emoji. Stiles grins, unable to help himself. “I hadn’t seen it yet,” he tells her. She smiles back at him and grabs his wrist, a little too friendly, but Stiles allows it. 

“You deserve to be happy,” she tells him, dead serious. The fans are always nice to him, sometimes way too nice than he could ever really deserve, and this comment is no exception. But she means it. She’s not saying it to be nice. She really feels that way. It almost hurts his feelings, because holy shit, there are lots of things that he’s felt that he’s deserved in the past few years – happy wasn’t one of them. Stiles is sure she doesn’t mean to give him an existential crisis by saying this, so he clears his throat and smiles at her. “Let’s get our picture, huh?” 

When Stiles comes back to his hotel, Derek is already there, talking to Frank. Which is really surprising, because Frank has been on Stiles’ security team for years and years now, and Stiles doesn’t even know if the guy is married or has kids or where he’s from. He talks about as much as an elf on the shelf, seriously. 

But Derek is talking to him and Frank seems only mildly irritated by him. Stiles has it on good authority Frank hates Stiles’ guts, hates everyone’s guts, but Derek Hale knows how to charm people. Even surly security guards. 

“I saw that picture you posted,” Stiles accuses Derek as soon as he comes into his suite, lifting an eyebrow. Derek is drinking a Diet Coke out of the can, hovering by the window where the Eiffel Tower is visible in the near distance. Again, he looks impeccably well put together, no jet lag, no airplane smell, nothing. 

“Funny, you don’t even follow me on Instagram,” he accuses right back, a smile on his face. 

“I don’t follow anybody.” 

“You follow the Christmas Countdown Instagram.” 

Oh, right. That’s one of the funnier things Stiles has ever done. He dropped his following down to zero for an album launch, the Free At Last launch actually, as part of a social media blackout. About halfway through that tour he went ahead and followed just one single account – one that’s run by someone claiming to be Santa, that does a countdown to Christmas all year, every year. It’s a meme, at this point. 

“Well, I’m a December baby. I like Christmas.” 

“Speaking of, your birthday is coming up,” Derek snaps his fingers as if he just remembered that. Stiles’ birthday is still months away; they’re only just now creeping into September. He had almost forgotten about that, himself. 

“Don’t change the subject,” he waves his hand, like that doesn’t matter. “I uh. I really liked that picture.” 

“It’s a good picture.” 

They stare at one another. Frank is sitting there eating a steak from room service, bib on, massacring the plate, but it’s like he’s not even there at all. “You wanna –“ Stiles juts his thumb in the direction of his bedroom. 

Derek nods. He brings his Diet Coke along with him, following behind Stiles to the big bedroom with the double doors that Stiles closes behind them as soon as they’re both inside. 

It’s a big room. The bed is humongous, the view from the window incredible, the carpeting dreamy and pink. This is perhaps Stiles’ favorite hotel room in the history of hotel rooms. 

“I can’t believe you came here,” Stiles tells him as he sits down on the end of the bed and starts untying his shoes. 

“That’s only the tenth time you’ve said that.” 

“Because I really can’t believe it,” he thumps one shoe down on the ground. “It’s very Nora Ephron of you.” 

“Nora Ephron…?” 

“You know. Sleepless in Seattle. You’ve Got Mail. Meg Ryan.” 

Derek blinks at him. “You mean it’s romantic.” 

“Yes,” he throws his second shoe onto the floor. “I mean you’re like my romantic lead. You’ve come all the way to Paris to fuck me, it’s very worthy of a movie.” 

“I did not come all the way to Paris just to fuck you,” he laughs, shaking his head. “I came to see your show and spend some time with you.” 

“In bed,” he leans back and rubs the covers with a smirk. 

“You’re just trying to get me to take my shirt off,” Derek notes. He throws his empty soda can into the trash and then stuffs his hands into his pockets.

“So what if I am?” 

Derek shrugs. 

“Come sit here,” Stiles says, gesturing at him. Derek doesn’t need to be asked twice. He sits right down next to Stiles, close. Very close. Their knees are touching, their thighs, their arms. “What’d you and Frank talk about?” 

“Uh, not much,” he confesses. “He’s kind of a jackass.”

“Big time.” 

“Where’s Boyd?” 

“With his girlfriend,” he shrugs. “It is Paris, after all. City of love, yadda yadda, bonjour.” He traces an invisible pattern on his knee with his finger, just so he won’t have to look Derek in the face. “It’s funny you chose this particular show to come to see.” 

“Is it?” 

“Yeah. Paris and all.” 

“I like Paris. Lots of good food.”

“So you came here to eat?” 

“Stiles,” he uses his index finger to lift Stiles’ chin up, turn his face, so they’re looking at one another in the eyes. “I figured the act of coming here would’ve spoken for itself, but if you want me to spell it out for you – I came here, yes, to romance you.” 

“Oh,” he blushes, looks away, takes Derek’s finger off his face even though he doesn’t want to. 

“I don’t get you. You’re always saying it would be the worst thing to have someone be nice to you, and,” here, he does what is a very inaccurate mimicry of Stiles’ voice, “I don’t want a relationship I don’t want you saying shit like that to me.” 

“I do not sound like that,” Stiles scoffs, offended. 

“My point is, you give me mixed signals.” 

“Of course I do. Because I’m nuts,” he puts his finger next to his head and swirls it around, “cuckoo.” 

“I don’t mind that you’re unhinged.”

“Who said unhinged?” 

Derek gives him a look. Stiles smiles. He is definitely unhinged, and that much has been established, and both of them know it. “You being nuts isn’t the issue. The issue is, you clearly want something from me, but you refuse to ask for it.” 

“I don’t know what you mean.” 

“You do,” Derek points to him, resolute. “Yes, you do. You just don’t want to admit it. You don’t want to admit it, and you don’t want to ask for it, and you don’t want me to outright say it. But you want all of these things at the same time that you don’t.” 

“So you came to Paris to psychoanalyze me.” 

“I came to Paris to see you,” he corrects. “No more riddles. Do with this information what you will.” 

Stiles purses his lips, mostly just to hide a smile. Derek is good at this. And he’s good at this because he’s been surrounded by women his entire life – Stiles may not be a woman, but being attracted to men and being with men gives him a certain quality that straight men don’t always have. Not only is Stiles nuts, but he’s gay, to boot. A certain kind of gay. Attracted to big strong guys gay. Derek knows how to read between the lines the way other men cannot fucking begin to. It is simultaneously his most frustrating quality and his most endearing one. 

“You took your shoes off, so I take it you’re in for the night,” Derek gestures to Stiles socked feet. 

“I thought we’d get room service and have sex.” 

“And talk,” Derek tacks on. 

“No talk. Only food and sex. Silent.” 

“You’re just mad because you don’t like being figured out.” 

“You haven’t got me figured out,” Stiles shakes his head. “You’d like to think so.” 

“You want me to be your boyfriend so badly,” Derek says, and Stiles is nearly bowled over by the size of his balls for having the guts to say that. 

Well, he’s right. But Stiles really is not about to admit it. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He teases. 

“I would. I’m not the one playing mind games. I’ve been forthright.” 

He certainty has been, at that. Men don’t fly across the world to see people they just want to bone and forget about, eventually. Especially not men like Derek Hale, who could be in any city, anywhere, with anyone he wanted. He chose to be here. He has chosen to be with Stiles time and time again. These are things that have not gone unnoticed or unappreciated by Stiles, not one bit. 

“You are nice to me,” Stiles tells him, averting his gaze because he feels a bit exposed. “And you’ve been – well.” This is a particularly hard feeling to put into words. That feeling like, if Stiles were another person in another lifetime, then he could be with Derek. There should be a word for that, but there isn’t. “I wish that - I wish – I just want to be normal.” 

Derek looks at him, but he stays quiet. 

“You know. It sucks being so fucked in the head.” 

“I’m fucked in the head, too. Used to be I’d lose my mind over not being able to find the remote. I punched a hole in the wall for that, once.” 

Stiles laughs, because that is fucking ridiculous. Derek smiles too, but he’s serious, Stiles knows that he is, and that that seriously happened. “Yes, but. You can have healthy normal relationships. I. You know.” Can’t. Won’t. Both. 

“I’m going to say something you’re not going to like,” Derek begins. Stiles has heard this line from him so many times it’s all he can really do to just sit there and roll his eyes. “You should go to therapy.”

“Ugh,” Stiles’ eyes roll so far back he’s amazed they don’t go skittering onto the floor like a couple of marbles. “Because sitting on a couch crying about how shitty my ex was to a person I pay to listen to me is going to magically fix my brain.” 

“Nobody said anything about magically fixing your brain. You think of it so differently than what it actually is.” 

“What do you really think it’s going to do for me?” 

“Help you,” he shrugs, as though it’s really that simple. 

“I just don’t believe in that,” he waves his hand. 

“It helped me.” 

“Yeah, but you’re – I don’t know.” He really doesn’t know. Something about Derek is just different, much different from Stiles. “You just needed someone to tell you not to punch cars. I need someone to climb inside my head and perform surgery on it if I could ever hope to be a functioning adult.” 

Derek sighs through his nose. “You are stubborn,” he assesses, and he’s hit the nail on the head. “It was just a suggestion. I can’t make you do anything. No one can.” 

The problem is, there are at least a few dozen people who can make Stiles do anything they want him to. He hadn’t realized, as a seventeen year old kid making his dream come true, what he was actually signing on for in that contract. 

“Now, where’s that room service menu?” Derek stands from the bed and begins to rifle around for it, while Stiles sits and chews on his thumb nail, contemplative. He can’t help from thinking that Derek is right about a lot of things. Derek is right that Stiles wants this to be an actual thing that they’re doing, instead of a non-descript blob of fucking and hanging out. 

Derek is right that Stiles is fucked in the head and plays mind games and says one thing then does another. He’s right that Stiles is stubborn. But, therapy? Stiles could laugh. 

Therapy. Some lady in a pant suit squinting at him and going “uh huh, and how do you feel about that?” It’s funny, to Stiles. He spent years of his life being beaten and talked down to and manipulated and gaslit and … this person with a PhD is going to do what for him? Tell him it’s not his fault? 

Derek gets something with lamb in it and Stiles gets a steak. There’s a table outside on the patio of Stiles’ suite, so they sit out there in the balmy night time air, where it’s a bit loud from traffic and the usual sounds of the city, but it is beautiful. Stiles drinks a glass of wine and watches the twinkling lights of the Eiffel Tower, because no matter how many times he sees it, it is mesmerizing. 

“How did the movie go?” Stiles asks, setting his fork and knife down. “I just realized you’ve barely told me anything about it.” 

“It went well.” 

“You kissed Josh.” Stiles scrunches his face up. 

“Unfortunately, I did.” 

“Give me a break. He’s hot, it was no cross to bear. I’m just thinking, I’m going to have to sit there and watch it. There’s a sex scene too, isn’t there?” 

Derek smirks and drinks his wine. That’s enough of an answer, anyway. 

“I’m gonna have to sit and watch two men I’ve have inside of me kiss and have sex. I should not hang around actors, I’m not mature enough.” 

“I think you’ll survive,” he swishes his glass a bit, staring out across the city skyline. Then, he clears his throat. “Maybe you’d like to come to the premiere with me.” 

“Whoa, the premiere?” He puts his fork down again, so it clinks. “Uh, twist my arm why don’t you?” 

“You’d like that?” 

“I would love that,” he clarifies. “Thank you. I changed my mind, sleeping with actors is great, actually.” 

Derek smiles at him, with all of his teeth, shiny and white. Stiles is fond of him. Big time. Derek is nice and smart and sexy and patient and kind and thoughtful. It’s like he fell off the perfect man tree somewhere in heaven; he’s the kind of guy one only dreams about. 

The familiar itch hits him again, watching Derek’s face lit up by the city lights, to go and get his guitar and try to think of how to put this exact moment into words. He still hasn’t allowed himself to write about Derek, terrified of breaking the seal and unleashing hell upon both of them. He does not know when he started thinking of his writing as a curse he puts on others. Maybe around the time Matt told him how violated it makes him feel, that Stiles would dare to write a song about him. 

But it’s all Stiles knows how to do. It’s all he can think about, looking at Derek Hale. 

They go back inside, leaving all the dishes out on the table, the half finished wine, the half finished food, and they don’t waste any time getting into bed together. Derek kisses him in all the right places, down his jaw and his neck where it tickles, across his collarbones, sucking a mark into his skin just because he can, just because he likes it when Stiles’ breath hitches. 

It’s face to face again, when Derek slides inside of him. Stiles has never had this kind of intimate sex with someone else this many times in a row – looking right into each other’s eyes, with Derek’s hands on his stomach, his hips, his chest. He says, “I love fucking you like this,” pausing briefly to stroke gently up and down Stiles’ bare chest. 

Stiles licks his lips and isn’t sure what to say. The L word is taboo, even in reference to sex. 

“You’re so god damn good looking,” Derek says this as an accusation, like it’s something Stiles does to him, something Stiles uses against him. 

“You think so?” 

“Yes,” he pumps in and out again, slowly, so Stiles’ breath catches in his throat. “I love – I love being inside of you.” 

The L word again. The hesitation, the stutter, the change in sentence trajectories. Stiles has heard it before. Many times. People have told Stiles that they love him a lot. Tons. Matt used to say it to get him to do whatever he wanted, and other men have said it to get Stiles to trust them, and friends have said it to get things out of him – on and on. 

It’s why he doesn’t want Derek to say it. There are a lot of reasons Derek shouldn’t say it, chief of all being that he couldn’t possibly mean it, and secondly being that if he did really mean it, that’s an even bigger problem. 

The feeling from before, the one there’s no word for, strikes again. And Stiles wants to be someone who can be loved, really loved. He wants to be someone else. He wants to go back to being who he was before Matt. Whoever he was when he was just a poster on the wall in Derek Hale’s childhood house - that’s who he wishes he could be. The dream boy. That boy deserves someone who loves him. 

As for Stiles, he is ruined. You can’t love a broken thing. Stiles would know. 

All the same, the sex is amazing. The food is amazing. The view is amazing, the room, the bed. The show had been the best one he’s played in months, maybe even years, and when he closes his eyes to sleep with his cheek pressed against Derek’s chest, he’s happy. 

He has a dream. It’s in the Nashville apartment, that blue blue apartment where Stiles wrote the vast majority of his third and fourth records, his best ones, his dearest works. In the living room, Stiles and Derek are drinking wine and pruning a great big lemon tree that didn’t exist in reality, but is here in this dream version of his Nashville place. 

They’re having a good time doing it, too – laughing and drinking without a care in the world. They cut dead leaves off and watch them flutter to the ground, pick lemons off and put them in a big blue bowl on the coffee table. 

Stiles picks the bowl up and Derek comes with him, to the bedroom. The door opens and it’s blue, even more blue than Stiles remembers it being. Blue as far as the eye can see, like the ocean. The room ebbs and flows like they’re on a boat, the room shaking, the lamp on the bedside table going back and forth, back and forth. 

He goes to put his lemons down on the table. Someone grabs his wrist, a big hand, a familiar one – it’s Matt. He drops his lemons, the bowl shattering, the fruit scattering and disappearing, falling into the water that’s pooling around their feet. He pushes Stiles down on the bed and puts his hands around Stiles’ throat even as Stiles tries to scream Derek’s name, for help, for someone; it is no use. 

“What did you really think?” Matt asks him, pressing his hands harder into Stiles’ neck, so he can’t breathe. “You could forget about me?” 

Then he’s trapped, on the bed, in Nashville, in the blue bedroom with the overturned lamp, and distantly, he can hear a crowd singing Nashville, far away, from underwater. 

“…it’s me, it’s me,” someone is saying from above him, shaking him, pulling him up out of bed. “Stiles, it’s me, god dammit!” His eyes fly open and he scrambles, up, away, his entire body shaking as he flies toward the floor just to get off of that fucking bed in Nashville. 

He falls on the ground. It’s not the hardwood floors from his Nashville bedroom, it’s the pink carpeting from his hotel room in Paris. Because that’s where he is. Pink carpeting. The lights are on. Frank is in the doorway looking a bit panicked, in his pajamas, because he had been woken up. It’s the middle of the night, and Derek is sitting on the edge of the bed with the sheets wrapped around his middle. They had been sleeping. Stiles had a nightmare. 

Stiles crabs himself away from the bed to lean his back against the wall, pushing his hands to his eyes. He takes in a deep, big breath. Nashville is thousands and thousands of miles away. Someone else bought his apartment and painted over those blue walls. That place is no more. He tells himself these things as a mantra, whenever it gets this bad. 

Derek moves. He says, “I think we’re okay,” likely to Frank. Frank, who had been sleeping and was awoken by Stiles screaming his fucking head off over a nightmare. He ran in here expecting to find Derek trying to kill him or something, most likely. Which is ironic. 

The bedroom doors close. Stiles still has his hands pressed against his eyes, so he doesn’t see it when Derek moves closer to him, but he hears it. The sound of the sheets rustling. Derek’s foot falls on carpet. “You’re okay,” he says, dulcet tone, speaking to a wounded animal tone. 

“Holy shit,” he says. He’s shaking still. “I thought – I just –“ 

Derek sits down right next to him on the floor, so their bodies are touching. He says, “you screamed at me not to touch you.” 

“I don’t remember that,” he says, honest. He takes his hands off his eyes and looks across the room. The last time he jumped off of a bed and got on the floor to hide like this…but then, he doesn’t think about that. He refuses to think about that. 

“What was that?” Derek asks. 

“A nightmare.” 

“About Matt?” 

Stiles sniffles, which is when he realizes he’s crying. He feels his cheeks, and they’re wet. “Nashville.” 

“Nashville,” Derek repeats. He shakes his head. He does not understand. 

“We were – we were picking lemons,” he starts, and Derek furrows his brow. 

“Lemons, again.” 

“Lemons, again,” he agrees. They mean something, they represent something, and Stiles has not yet figured out precisely what. “In my place in Nashville. I sold it. I got rid of it.” 

Derek rubs at his jaw, because he has no fucking idea what is going on here. Stiles had told him that in Nashville, that’s where everything came crashing down, where Matt tried to kill him and Boyd came in and saw and it was a whole thing. But he hadn’t been particularly specific, for his own mental well being. 

The thing is, Stiles also has no fucking idea what’s going on here. Because, yes, the nightmares have been coming back, but he had a good day, today. He played a good fucking show. He had fun up there. Derek came all the way to Paris, and they ate good food and had good sex and when Stiles fell asleep, he was smiling. 

“Why?” He asks, sucking in a great big breath. “Why won’t he just fucking –“ he smacks his palm against his forehead, again and again, “get out, get out, get out.” 

Derek takes Stiles’ wrist, holds it down, so he won’t hit himself again. 

“Why, why, why? I do everything right and I show up and I don’t drink and I try so hard and it doesn’t matter,” he hugs his knees to his chest. “He’s there. Always there.” 

“Stiles,” Derek says, voice low. He does not know what to say. 

Stiles had thought leaving Nashville and getting rid of the apartment would be like erasing the memory, like it never happened to begin with. He had thought that if he left and never went back, it would fade. The memory. The bruises. The event itself. The room. 

Stiles tried to get rid of that fucking room. But he knows, in his head, he never really left it. He is still in that bed, with Matt on top of him, holding him down, stuck, trapped. He has been trapped there this entire time. 

“I’m doing the best I can,” he says, and Derek nods. 

“You’re doing everything. You are doing fine,” he strokes Stiles’ hair. “It was just a nightmare. Just a nightmare.” 

It wasn’t. It was real. It happened to him. 

“Let’s get back in bed, come on.” He moves to stand, but Stiles latches onto his arm in a vice grip with both hands, eyes wide. 

“Don’t make me get into the bed,” he begs. “I can’t.” 

Derek hesitates. Then, he stands up and says, “all right. No bed. Here.” 

He starts pulling the pillows off, the comforter, the blanket. On the floor, he spreads the comforter out and then sets up all of the pillows, while Stiles watches sort of distant and detached. Like this is happening in another room instead of right in front of him. 

When he’s done setting up, he gestures for Stiles to come over. Stiles does, slowly. He crawls over and plops down onto the floor, the comforter laid out, and Derek pulls the blanket up over them. 

The room looks different from down here. There are no lemon trees and no oceans – just pink carpets, nice drapes, and Derek Hale. They lay down and Derek pulls Stiles close against his body, holding him, not letting go. “He will never get close enough to you to hurt you ever again,” he promises. Stiles closes his eyes and wants to believe that. 

Derek kisses Stiles’ forehead. 

“I’ll stay awake until you fall back asleep,” he says, and Stiles burrows deeper into him. “I’ll be right here.” 

It’s quiet, for a moment. Stiles curls his fingers against Derek’s chest. He says, “they’re making me go back.” 

“Go back where?” 

“Nashville.” 

“Oh,” he sighs. “Of course they are.” 

Yes, of course they are. 

“I don’t want to go back,” he confesses in a whisper. “It’s just a place. Then it isn’t.” 

“I know.” 

“It’s not just a place. It’s where - it’s where all my nightmares are.” 

Derek squeezes him. “Then I will go, too. I’ll go with you, baby. You don’t have to go alone.”

Stiles is so relieved to hear this he cries. He cries, great big heaving sobs, because he needed someone to go with him. He could not go alone, and he didn’t even have to fucking ask. Derek offered, because he’s too nice, because he’s too perfect, and Stiles does not deserve it. 

Derek had almost said he loved Stiles, last night. Stiles does not deserve it.

**

In the morning, Stiles wakes up stiff. Sleeping on the floor, no matter how many pillows and blankets one uses to pad it, is still sleeping on the fucking floor. He sits up groggy and disoriented, turning to find Derek is up.

He’s standing on the patio, drinking coffee and looking out at the early morning sunrise. Stiles feels like hell, and there’s Derek, looking like a magazine ad. It isn’t fair, but at least Stiles gets to look. 

Derek turns and sees Stiles is awake through the glass. He moves to come inside and Stiles tenses up, because he isn’t sure what they’re going to say to one another after last night.

That had been.... A lot. Derek has been filled in on Stiles’ issues, yes. He has been told that certain things occurred, yes. But he has not really seen first hand the kind of turmoil it’s left inside of Stiles’ body. Now, he has. Stiles is afraid that Derek is going to come in and awkwardly clear his throat and announce he’s leaving early, and then he’ll be gone for good, no more texts, no more calls, nothing. Stiles clearly has way too much emotional baggage and way too many issues, and Derek did not sign up for that bullshit. 

Derek comes in and he smiles. “I’m fucking starving,” he says, slowly closing the door behind him. “Let’s go get breakfast.” 

“Uh, okay,” Stiles’ voice sounds like hell. He’d been screaming and crying last night, not to mention he played an entire show, as well. 

“You have the day off?” 

“Yes. No show today or tomorrow, but tomorrow we start heading for Berlin.” 

“Then we’ve got tons of time,” he gestures at Stiles. “Come on, let’s get in the shower. I need to eat or I’m going to eat a pillow.” 

“Oh,” Stiles scrambles up to his feet, pulling himself off the floor and wincing a bit. Derek helps him as soon as he’s close enough, taking Stiles’ elbow and guiding him over to the bathroom. 

They brush their teeth side by side, then get undressed side by side. Derek turns on the water and holds his hand out to wait for it to get to the right temperature – as he does so, he gives Stiles a small smile. 

Stiles hugs his arms against his bare stomach and feels sad. Here in Paris with Derek Hale about to shower with the guy, and he’s frowning and acting like he’s being tortured, because that’s just how he is, sometimes. He’s not always a performer or even an artist, not always smart and witty and fun to be around. Sometimes, he’s just a sad sack of shit. But Derek still smiles at him. 

They get in. Derek lets Stiles have the water first, so the droplets pelt Stiles’ bare skin. It feels good, after last night, so he closes his eyes and sighs. 

“Does your neck ever hurt?” 

“Huh?” Stiles asks, opening his eyes. 

“Your neck. You bend it a lot. Playing the piano, the guitar. Does it ever hurt?” 

“Um…” this is so fucking random. “Yes. I get massages. Massage therapy.” 

“Does it hurt now?” He reaches his hand out like he’s seriously going to wrap it around the back of Stiles’ neck and start rubbing – but Stiles swats it right out of the air, furrowing his brow. 

“Can I talk to you?” He demands, and Derek blinks. “About last night.” 

“I wasn’t not talking about it. I just figured maybe you wouldn’t like to. I just thought –“ 

“I’m sorry,” he interrupts, shaking his head. “That was so fucked up. I’m really sorry. I just - I’m really sorry.” 

Derek blinks at him. “It’s nothing to apologize for.” 

“It is. You shouldn’t have to deal with that,” Stiles looks away, at the wall of the shower, shaking his head. “I’m humiliated.” Which is true. That entire thing was fucking humiliating, on top of being traumatic and horrible. It’s not exactly the sexiest thing on earth to be a god damn basket case. 

“Whoa,” Derek reaches out and touches Stiles, on the hips – he uses them to pull Stiles’ wet body closer to his own, instead of pushing him away, which is what Stiles really believes that Derek should be doing if he knows what’s good for him. “Stiles. It’s okay. It happens. It’s part of it.” 

“Part of what?” 

“The process. Of course you have bad dreams about him, he’s a –“ he pauses. He likely was going to use a very different word, and a much less nice word, but he chooses a different one. “…the things he did to you. It’s okay to have nightmares.” 

“But we had so much fun,” he argues in a small voice, shaking his head. “But we had fun. And I had a good show.” 

Derek shrugs. “Some days are good and some are bad and some are both.” 

Stiles wants to cry again, but then he doesn’t want to. He really doesn’t feel like crying, since Derek came all the way here, and it wasn’t to see Stiles acting this way. He wants to be all sexy and charming because they’re in Paris together, and in the Nora Ephron movies, no one ever has complete emotional breakdowns over their shitty ex-boyfriends. 

“You slept on the floor,” Stiles reminds him, and Derek just smiles at him. 

“It’s good for my back, actually.” 

“Derek.” 

“Seriously. It’s fine. I would sleep on the floor every single night with you.” 

Stiles thinks about the almost “I love you” in bed, and then he averts his eyes. Sometimes, _I love you_ is said in different ways. Like saying you’d sleep on the floor every night for someone else. That’s a way of saying _I love you_. Derek had just said it, and Stiles hates that he’s just said it, because it’s the worst god damn thing, for Derek to ever feel that way about Stiles. He does not deserve it. “You don’t have to come to Nashville.” 

“I’m coming.”

“You don’t –“ 

“Wash your hair,” he commands, lifting an eyebrow. He’s going to come to Nashville no matter what Stiles fucking says, anyway, so Stiles turns and grabs the shampoo from its perch. “I am so fucking hungry I would eat a bar of soap.” 

Stiles snorts. 

“You know any good restaurants?” 

“Uh. Sadly not. I wish I were some worldly hot babe who knows all the good spots to eat in Paris, but again, I’m just an ugly American.” 

“There’s gotta be somewhere.” 

“You’ve talked about nothing else but eating since I woke up,” Stiles lathers his hair and smiles. 

“I need to eat. I can’t go this long without food.” 

Once they’re out of the shower, Derek dresses quickly and then hounds Stiles about hurrying up, we need to go, I need to eat. Stiles is ushered out the door with Frank with his hair still wet and dripping onto his shoulders. 

On the elevator, Derek glares at his phone, trying to find someplace to get food. There’s a place within walking distance, so the three of them step outside to meet the crisp morning head on. 

It’s colder than Stiles had expected it to be. He’s in just a t-shirt, the skin on his arms pebbling as he puts his sunglasses on and ducks his head to avoid the cameras flashing across his face. 

Derek notices. He reaches out and wraps his arm around Stiles’ body as they walk, pulling him close against his chest. “You’re shivering,” he comments. But Derek is really warm, like he’s insulated. Muscles can do that to a person, Stiles guesses. 

They get coffee and pastries at an extremely picturesque little café. It reminds Stiles of something from a movie about France that was actually filmed on a studio lot in Los Angeles - it’s pastels and little tables, flowers in boxes outside, people bustling around quickly. Derek eats like a machine, shoveling in bite after bite like his very life depends on it, while Stiles picks at his chocolate croissant and mostly just drinks coffee. 

Scott, 8:34 AM : You spent the night with Derek ?! Ohh la la !  
Me, 8:36 AM : baguette!  
Scott, 8:38 AM : Is he coming along to Berlin?! 

Stiles doesn’t know. He looks up from his phone and asks. “So, how long are you staying, again?” 

Derek swallows the giant bite he had in his mouth before answering. “I’ve got a flight back tomorrow morning.” 

Me, 8:41 AM : No, he has a life that doesn’t revolve around me, sadly.  
Scott, 8:43 AM : no he doesn’t LMFAO. His whole life is Stiles stiles and then some more stiles for good measure. I saw his insta post you know 

Millions of people saw that Instagram post, actually. Stiles hadn’t thought of it like a neon sign that meant to read STILES AND DEREK ARE TOGETHER, but of course, that’s exactly how people took it. In all the chaos of tour and whatever it is Derek and Stiles are actually doing, he had forgotten the part where they were supposed to just be doing this to get people’s attention to sell whatever it is they wanted to sell. 

People really think that Stiles and Derek are together. Like, for real. Not fucking or hanging out or hooking up or any of that bullshit. Jesus, millions of people really believe that. 

Stiles finishes his croissant and looks across the park they’re sitting in. The city, the people, the trees, the cars. He says, “you really don’t have to come to Nashville.” 

“I know I don’t have to go,” he smiles. “I want to.” 

He rubs at his jaw and thinks of when Derek had almost said he loved Stiles. Does he mean that? Is he ever going to say it? Should Stiles let him say it?

**

Stiles has been imperiously summoned to the offices in New York, the exact moment he comes home from Europe. The tour overseas was bearable, if even a little bit good, at parts. The shows were endurable, the fans ecstatic to see him, the band not nearly as grumpy as usual, and Derek had come to see him. Even though there were some rocky moments, Stiles is in a relatively decent mood when he steps onto the elevator to take him up to see Lydia on an overcast September afternoon.

He has no context for what this is all about; only that Lydia had personally called him and personally requested that he come and speak with her face to face, and that it was important. Lydia rarely does her own bidding anymore. Typically she has the poor soul she’s got working as her assistant do the menial task of calling Stiles on the phone, but not this time. For whatever reason, it was this small little detail that had Stiles pretty much immediately agreeing to go see her. 

It must be as important as she says, if she’s calling him herself. 

He steps out into the hall with Boyd and takes his sunglasses off, tucking them into the front of his shirt. People say hello to him as he passes, most of them he’s never met before or at least has no memory of meeting. He says hello back, just to be polite. He knocks twice on Lydia’s door before stepping inside, taking in the full picture. 

She’s sitting primly at her desk. She seems stiff and uncomfortable, the lights off, only the scant sunlight from her big window behind her offering any visibility in here. As Stiles gets closer to her, he notices that she seems upset. Her eyes are red and puffy as though she has been crying, and she is not meeting Stiles’ eyes directly. 

She’s clicking a pen, again and again, as though she is nervous to be speaking with him. None of these things bode particularly well. 

“What’s up?” Stiles asks. 

“Will you close the door for me, Boyd?” She asks, after clearing her throat. Her voice is tight and clipped, another piece of evidence pointing to her having spent the morning in her office, in the dark, crying. Stiles blinks, the door behind them shutting with a hard bang. 

“Are you okay?” He asks her, cautious. He’s honestly afraid for what’s about to happen in this room. He hasn’t seen Lydia upset like this in years, maybe not since fucking high school. 

She looks at him, right in the eyes. “Why don’t you sit down?” 

“Okay…” he sits, slowly. “What’s going on?” 

Lydia briefly presses the back of her hand to her mouth, a nervous sort of a gesture. Then, she pulls it down and starts clicking her pen again, turning slowly in her swivel chair to face her window. She sighs through her nose. “I am not quite sure where to begin. I had all morning to think about it, and I still don’t know where to start.” 

“Something bad happened,” he guesses, and she doesn’t respond. “The label is cutting me?” 

Lydia shakes her head and actually snorts a laugh, as if it’s so ridiculous. “They would never cut you, Stiles.” 

“…they’re extending the tour?” 

“Stop guessing,” she shakes her head, again, turning back in her chair to face him. She rubs at her face, stares at her desk, takes in another great big breath. This is all very ominous. Like someone has died. 

Stiles turns and looks at Boyd, to see if he’s perhaps already got an idea of what’s going on here; but he seems about just as lost as Stiles is. Clueless, blinking, waiting for Lydia to say something. 

“About a month ago I got this sort of, ah, bizarre email that I had actually intended to ignore,” she is staring pointedly down at her desk, as though for some reason, she can’t bear to look at Stiles in the face and tell him this. “It was from someone who got fired from the management of a hotel in Manhattan. They told me that they had something that the hotel was hiding, that I was probably going to be pretty interested in, specifically in regards to you.” 

That’s out of left field. “To me.” 

She nods, once, terse. 

“A former manager of a hotel in Manhattan had something for you about me.” 

“That was my attitude,” she gestures to him. “I almost didn’t answer it. I don’t know why I did,” she laughs this humorless laugh, turning to stare at the corner of her office with this far away look on her face. “I don’t know why, but I did. They started talking about monetary compensation. They wanted me to pay them for something I hadn’t even seen yet or even knew what it was.” 

Stiles rubs the back of his neck. None of this is making any sense to him. 

“Then they said the price was high because I had to compete with somebody else who was also very interested in getting their hands on this thing. Apparently, some guys in the MLB wanted to pay a whole lot of money to make sure it never saw the light of day.” 

“The…” he trails off. The fucking MLB. 

“I don’t know who specifically. I didn’t ask. They wouldn’t have told me even if I did. They wanted millions of dollars for this. Again, I have no context. Just that it’s about you, and these baseball guys don’t want it out there. Millions of dollars.”

“Hold on,” he tries, scrambling to keep up with this information dump, but she cuts him off, and she keeps talking.

“I just had a feeling. I had a feeling that some part of the mystery of what has been going on with you was going to be solved. Plus, nobody from any faction of sports ever wants something _good_ covered up,” she rolls her eyes, and she’s right. All of the cover ups in sports’ past have been tawdry, at best. “I paid them and they sent me this.” 

She’s got a flash drive in her fingers. Stiles swallows the lump that has been forming in his throat since the second she mentioned the fucking MLB, since the second he knew where all this was ultimately going to wind up going. He doesn’t know what’s on that flash drive. 

He just knows he doesn’t want to. 

It’s no matter. She opens up her laptop and jabs the flash drive in, opening up its folder when it prompts her to do so. There’s one lonely little file there, no real title, just a date and a time. 

She opens her mouth, like she’s going to say something else. Then, she closes it. Shakes her head. Double clicks on the file. 

Stiles is only confused by what he sees for a millisecond; it’s a video, a blurry one at that, of the inside of an elevator. Security footage, it looks like. But as the seconds tick by, he realizes that this is not just any old elevator on the island of Manhattan - he recognizes that elevator. It’s from a hotel all right, one that he stayed in for a little while, because his Tribeca place was being renovated. 

Matt is there. So is Stiles. They get on and Stiles knows this. He has been here before. He remembers this. The clothes they’re wearing, the elevator, all of it. It’s a memory of his. 

“No way,” he says, voice low. This cannot be happening. He cannot be sitting here watching this right now, he cannot be sitting here with Lydia Martin watching this. He puts his hand over his mouth and he has this thought, of grabbing that laptop and throwing it through the window, so the video will be gone forever, before she gets the chance to watch it, before anyone does. 

But it would not ultimately matter, at this point. She’s already seen it. It’s why she had been crying all morning, why she can’t seem to look Stiles in the eye. 

They’re arguing, in the video. Stiles can only barely remember what the argument was actually about – probably, it was about how Matt thought that Stiles was texting his ex boyfriend, again. It cannot be overstated just how paranoid Matt was that Stiles was fucking other people. For how much they fought about it, Stiles really may as well have. 

They’re grainy, but it is clearly them, and they are clearly having an argument. Matt is huge, fucking gigantic, so while Stiles may not actually be all that small, he certainly looks it in this particular video, from this particular angle, which adds what Stiles is sure another layer of horror to its contents. 

Stiles says something that Matt does not like – and this is the money shot. Matt reaches out and hits Stiles so hard his entire body goes with it. He hits the wall, and the impact is good enough that the security camera shakes. There’s this extended second where Stiles is bent over clutching his face, tucked into the corner to make himself smaller so he won’t get hit again, and Matt is just standing there, looking at him. 

Stiles always used to wonder what went through Matt’s head in the seconds after he’d put his hands on Stiles. Did he enjoy it? 

Then, quick, Matt reaches over and pulls Stiles up to his full height. Other people are getting on, and Stiles goes still in the video. He just stands there. It isn’t clear to the other people that are on the elevator and it isn’t terribly clear from the angle the camera has, but Stiles is bleeding. He’d hit his head against the railing of the elevator and his forehead was cut and bleeding, and he just stands there, still, silent, staring dead ahead while Matt has a conversation with them. 

They had recognized Matt and said hello to him, and then that switch flipped in Matt’s head – the one that turns him from a monster to a charmer, in under a second. Stiles remembers that part probably most of all. Standing there bleeding after having been brutalized for doing nothing, nothing at all, and having to be quiet and still. He remembers his face hurting, his head pounding, his heart racing, but there he stood. Like a fucking statue. 

The others get off at their stop, and the doors close. Matt turns on Stiles and shoves him, enough that he’s backed against the wall. Here, you can see the blood, when he turns his face. 

“I don’t think we need to keep watching this,” Stiles says, high and nervous, but Lydia doesn’t stop it. It keeps playing. 

This is the part where Stiles is swearing up and down he wasn’t texting anyone else, talking to anyone else, seeing anyone else – and that was the truth. Matt had isolated him from pretty much everyone that he had the capability to isolate him from, at this point. Stiles had no friends, let alone any secret fucking side flings. Stiles on screen begs and pleads with him to calm down, to just relax, don’t hit me again, please don’t hit me, but it’s no use. It was never any use. 

The second hit is not as powerful as the first had been, but Stiles remembers it hurting more. He loses his footing and uses the railing to catch himself, and he remembers crying. It’s not clear on the tape, but he remembers. 

Matt reaches out and touches him, on the back. A gentle touch. He takes Stiles by his waist and moves to pull him in close, to hug him and apologize, but the doors open and Stiles storms away from him, crying, out into the hall, ultimately to their hotel room. 

There, Matt would beg for forgiveness and manipulate Stiles into believing that of course it was his own fault that Matt had to hit him, he was being infuriating as usual, he was lying, he was being shitty, he deserved it. None of that is on the tape. It ends right as Matt leaves, nothing left but a black screen. 

It’s silent, after it ends. Stiles doesn’t know what to say. When you’ve been holding something in for so long, and then it all comes out, even when you’ve spent years imagining what you would say and how you would say it…sometimes, nothing comes. 

Lydia closes her laptop and she looks upset again, resting her hand on top of it with a frown on her face. “I’m assuming this is one of several instances,” she says, tone unreadable. 

Stiles does not meet her eyes. He looks at the floor. He says, “many instances.” 

She does not like that response. She looks away, at the wall, and she sort of makes this face that suggests she wants to cry again, but she won’t, because it wouldn’t be professional. Who knows what she’s thinking? Is she imagining what it would mean? Is she imagining what it would have been like, to live through that exact scenario, sometimes even worse, every single fucking day? Is she wondering what kind of toll that would take on someone? 

“And I am assuming there is virtually no one else aside from you and Matt Harding who knows about this.” 

“Apparently some people in the fucking MLB know about it,” Boyd pipes up in a grumbling tone – he sounds angry. More so, he sounds fucking furious, and why wouldn’t he be? Those fucks that sign Matt’s checks have been hoarding this information for at least a year, maybe even longer than that. Sitting on this evidence that one of their own players is a psychotic, abusive, sociopathic asshole. And why? 

Because it wouldn’t do to have America’s favorite player turn out to be a dick. Which is putting it lightly. Forget what it means for Stiles – they could not care less. 

But, Lydia seems to not care so much about those guys, for the moment. She stares at Stiles, waiting for another name, because she knows there’s someone else. Someone else knows. She just wants Stiles to admit it. 

Stiles wants to get up and leave. He wants to stand up and say she’s seen enough and is she happy now she finally knows what the big secret is and she can finally use this to her advantage someway, somehow – but he knows he doesn’t have that option. “….Derek Hale.” 

“Derek Hale,” she repeats, throwing her hands up. “Derek god damn Hale, you tell. But not me. Derek Hale knows about this, but not your manager, your friends, your family –“ 

“I don’t know if yelling at him is the best course of action,” Boyd stands up and moves, to where Stiles is sitting and puts his hand on Stiles’ shoulder. It’s not really very much of a comfort, in this moment, but then nothing really would be. 

“Stiles. I could have helped you,” she says, but Stiles doesn’t want to hear it. He fucking doesn’t want to have to sit here and hear this shit after having to relive that nightmare. 

“No you couldn’t have. He had me stuck, I wasn’t – I wasn’t – I couldn’t. All right? What do you want me to say? Sorry? I am sorry.”

Lydia rubs her temples. This is out of her wheel house, completely and totally. She doesn’t know what to do with this multi million dollar bombshell she’s got in her lap and Stiles isn’t exactly helping her. There’s no one to help her. This is unprecedented territory. 

“They want this thing gone, do you get that?” She gestures to her closed laptop, again. “These guys do not fuck around. There are no grey areas in this, Stiles. There’s no case.” 

He knows what she means. There was no point in that video where anyone could say that Stiles was being aggressive, or that he did something to warrant Matt’s hitting him. There was no argument. Even for people who would grapple and struggle with the idea of a man abusing another man, this is pretty black and white. Anyone with eyes could see what was going on there, could see how completely unhinged and unpredictable and unworthy of his station that Matt Harding really is. That he’s no saint no hero no legend – but a guy who has to beat his boyfriend to feel like a big strong man. 

“If you put this out there –“ 

“I don’t want it out there.” 

Silence. The clock ticking, Lydia staring at him. Boyd’s hand on his shoulder tightening. 

“I don’t want it out there,” he repeats, more forcefully. “I don’t. They’ll fucking rip me apart and I’ve already gone through that, what he did to me, there are no god damn words for. I can’t go through that again.” 

Lydia purses her lips. She’s upset, she’s out of her element, and Stiles is behaving out of her control, again. This is an unacceptable answer to her, and he knows that it is. 

He really does not know what he expects her to say, if anything at all. Maybe she’ll release it anyway, in spite of Stiles’ objections, and put up some front about how even though it would completely emotionally cripple Stiles to have to live through the circus of this getting out in the press, it would be the right thing to do. 

Instead, she changes trajectories. She takes in a deep breath, as though she’s schooling herself to calm down, and then she lets it out, slow, before she starts speaking. “Stiles. I have been … pushing you. This past year. Maybe longer. Because I thought….” 

Because she thought it was for Stiles’ own good. For Stiles’ career. For him. To her, she was inexplicably and without context watching him more or less attempt to flush his entire career down the toilet. 

Now, she gets this dumped on her, and all of these instances of Stiles being crazy and out of control suddenly make sense to her. All of those fights. The erratic behavior. The drinking. All of these things she chastised him for and made him feel like shit over. There are so many things that she might feel the need to apologize for, that she seems at a loss of where to begin. It’s not really her fault. She was hard on him, but she didn’t know any better. Stiles isn’t mad at her. Or, he is, but he knows he’s really mad at someone else and just takes it out on her, sometimes. 

“…I don’t know what to say,” she settles on. “I don’t know what to do.” 

Stiles takes in a deep breath. More than anything, he wants to reach out and steal that flash drive and flush it down the toilet. He wants to hide it, destroy it, bury it, whatever he has to do to get rid of it. Maybe this is an old leftover feeling, from when he was still with Matt, actively working to protect him because even though he knew that what Matt did to him was wrong and would get him in big trouble, he didn’t want Matt to be in big trouble. Or maybe he’s just scared. Maybe he’s just fucking scared. 

He’s always thought, well, I can’t say anything, because I have no proof. They’d never believe me, because I have no proof. I have no credibility, because I have no proof. 

Now, he has proof, so he doesn’t have that excuse anymore. He confesses it to himself in his head; he’s a coward. He can’t do it. His mind is still trapped in that bed in Nashville, and he’s not doing well, and he is in no position to do this. He can’t. 

“What do you want me to do with this?” She says, gesturing again to the laptop. 

Stiles is resolute. “Nothing,” he says. “Nothing.”

**

Stiles makes the executive decision to inform precisely no one of this video’s existence. He had tried to convince Lydia to leave the flash drive in his possession, but she had all but laughed in his face – she knew he’d just destroy it. And while she promised that she would not do a single thing with it, she’s going to hold onto it. Forever. One day you’ll change your mind, she had told him.

He is sure he won’t. 

Most importantly, he decides to not tell Derek that this happened. He knows what Derek would say if he were aware of this video’s existence. He knows what Derek would do. 

Derek would not for one second let Stiles get away with hiding this. He would say it was insane, nuts, out of the question, because it would destroy Matt’s life, his career, and doesn’t Stiles want that? Isn’t he just foaming at the mouth for some good old fashioned revenge? 

The truth is, no. He’s not. What he’s foaming at the mouth for is leaving all of this bullshit behind him and moving on with his life. If there’s a part of him that knows he’ll never be able to fully move on, not really, until everyone knows who Matt really is and what he did to Stiles, he ignores it. 

When Derek calls and asks what Lydia had wanted him for, Stiles lies, and says that she just wanted to make sure he wasn’t planning some escape for getting out of playing the Nashville show. Does he fantasize about that? You bet. But he will play. 

He goes back to his Tribeca apartment after the meeting, locks himself in, and drinks. It’s not even noon. He drinks out of the bottle, sitting alone in his kitchen, watching the sun crawl across the building across the block. Derek is only a stone’s throw away from him, in his own place, and Stiles could go see him, but he’s worried that if he does, he’ll have no choice but to tell the truth the second Derek looks at him. 

Like Derek would know. Because he knows Stiles better than anyone has known him in years. Matt had known Stiles very well, and he had used all of that information to break him down even more, even more, until he was nothing. But Derek would never do anything like that. 

He gets so drunk he can barely get up. He knocks over all his bar stools and swears, tripping over them and winding up in a pile on the ground, blinking lazily at his ceiling. Before he knows it, the amorphous blob of Boyd is standing over him, frowning. 

He had heard the commotion outside and had come in to make sure Stiles wasn’t killing himself, most likely. He sighs, bends down, collects Stiles by his under arms and lets Stiles lean his full weight on him. 

“Is this how it’s going to be, now?” Boyd asks him as he guides Stiles to the bedroom down the hall. “You just drink yourself stupid every time you have to think about him?” 

“It’s working,” he argues. 

“It isn’t.” 

“What am I supposed to do?” His words come out messy, and jumbled, but he knows Boyd understands him. “Go to therapy like Derek Hale wants me to? Pffftttt.” 

Boyd opens the bedroom door and drags him inside. “Derek is right. Therapy is a good start. Telling the truth is an even better one.” 

“The truth,” he flops onto his bed, on his back, glaring at the ceiling, making air quotes with his fingers. “Right. That’s great. I’ll just tell everyone, hey, I’m garbage. I let this –“ he gestures out the window, as though Matt will be standing right there, “complete jackass hit me because I was too chickenshit to do anything about it. But you all still like me, right?” 

Boyd says, “I’m not saying it would be easy.” 

“Well I’m done being everyone’s fucking punching bag,” he grouses. He tries to lift himself up onto his elbows so he can look Boyd in the face, but he fumbles and falls back down. “I won’t open myself up to that shit. You know what they’ll say.” 

“People are going to say terrible things about you, either way.” 

Stiles waves his hand. “Leave me alone, I’m drunk, I’m done.” 

Boyd heaves out a great big very annoyed sigh, but he does as he’s asked.

**

The second Boston show just so happens to coincide with the ALCS games of the baseball season – and wouldn’t you know it, it’s the Yankees and the Red Sox, uh-fucking-gain. Stiles absorbs this information sort of numbly, because they won’t stop tweeting it at him. That he and Matt are going to be in the same city for a single night, this particular game is in Boston, Stiles’ show is in Boston, isn’t it all just sooo juicy? He tells himself he doesn’t care. Really, both of them are going to be way too busy to have even an iota of a chance to run into one another.

The guy is playing a Major League Baseball game, one that determines whether or not his team goes to the World Series. Stiles is playing a sold out fucking show in a city that has proven time and time again that they love him. Why in god’s name would they run into each other? 

He gets up in the morning in Boston, and he brushes his teeth. He meets his own eyes in the mirror and stares. He’s got messy brown hair, big brown eyes, spots on his face, and he’s thin, but has been gaining a little bit of weight these past couple of months, so he’s not quite so unsightly to look at. 

He spits and washes it down the drain, straightening up and staring at himself. Out loud, he says, “it’s not a big deal.” It’s not a big deal. It isn’t. They’ve unknowingly been in the same city as one another at least a half dozen times since breaking up, easily, and it isn’t a big deal now just because he’s sure of it. It isn’t a big deal that Stiles can imagine Matt getting up and doing his psychotic morning routine because he’s been subjected to it many times before. The push ups. The grunting. The treadmill, the sound of his feet banging against it, his breath, quick, the music, the smell of the coffee brewing. 

He does not realize it at first, that he’s lost himself to a memory. It’s way too late by the time he’s fully immersed in it – one morning, one day, long enough ago it should be a fuzzy memory, but the colors are bright and the feeling lingers. Not fuzzy. Not at all. It’s HD fucking surround sound. The treadmill. His footfalls, loud, hard. The music. Coffee brewing. The door opening, Stiles still half asleep, hands on him, grabbing him, asking him to get up. Matt wanted to take him to breakfast. 

Stiles did not want to go. Stiles was sick of going much of anywhere. He was sick of being seen, of being looked at, of people touching him, demanding his attention. He was worn out and he was tired of having to wear long sleeves in the heat, tired of Matt talking down to him all the time, tired of feeling like the entire world was watching his every single god damn move just waiting for him to fuck up. He didn’t want to go out anymore. He wanted to lie in bed all day, every day. He was that miserable. 

He said as much. He told Matt he was tired, he wasn’t in the mood, can’t they just have breakfast at home? But Matt was always relentless. He liked the fact that he was dating Stiles Stilinski, liked that fact more than he liked actually dating Stiles Stilinski. He liked that people took their picture, he liked being the center of attention, like the narcissist he fucking was. It was enjoyable to him. Stiles always wondered if part of what he enjoyed was knowing that Stiles hated it. 

Matt pushed for it, started physically pulling him up out of the bed, but Stiles resisted. It was never really a good idea to deny Matt anything he wanted, no matter how menial or ridiculous the request was, but Stiles was feeling, more and more at that time, like he couldn’t even get up. He just wanted to sleep all day, which was an unacceptable activity as far as Matt was concerned. 

Stiles shoved his hands away and told him to just let him be. Whether it was that Stiles pushed Matt’s hands away, or told him to go away, or had the nerve to not immediately do what was asked of him, it didn’t ultimately matter - Matt’s response to this was to backhand Stiles right across the face. For a while, Matt would only ever put his hands on Stiles if he were lividly angry, or if they were arguing, or if something had gone wrong that Matt felt the need to take his frustration out on Stiles. But toward the end, Matt would hit Stiles for just about anything. Saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, not getting up when Matt wanted him to, not having sex with him, not texting him back soon enough, daring to touch his piano – the list was endless. 

There was really nothing to fight about. Stiles absorbed the blow, robotically said he didn’t know what he was thinking, of course they’ll go out to eat, and got up. In a daze. Most of the time, Stiles was in a trance. Doing as he was told, for fear that one wrong move would get him hurt. 

Now, Stiles turns the water on the tap off and looks at himself. It isn’t a big deal. It is not a big deal. 

At the show, he eats dinner and avoids the siren’s call of liquor. He eats just for something to do that isn’t drinking, because drinking is always a downward spiral, and he’s trying not to do that anymore. Self-care, right? It’s not a big deal that Matt is here. He’s not even here, in the truest sense – he is not at this show, in this building, within miles of where Stiles is. He will not overreact. He will not try to drown the problem with alcohol. There is no problem. People paid to see him play, so he will get up there and play. 

He does the entire setlist and manages to not cry once, which is huge. Though if he were thinking more clearly about it, he’d know that it isn’t because he’s gotten over anything or is suddenly doing better, as if by magic. He’d know that it’s because he’s gone ahead and numbed himself. The words mean nothing, the songs mean nothing, what the crowd chants back at him means nothing. This is not a good thing, as he is deluding himself into believing it is. It is not self-care. 

It is self-destruction, pure and simple. That’s one of those things that Stiles buries deep. Refusing to tell people what happened to him, even though he has the proof to back him up now, is self-destruction. Fucking Derek Hale even though he can’t emotionally manage a relationship is self-destruction. But, hey, he plays well, if a bit stiff, and no one notices anything. He is, after all, a returning champion to a city that loves him – no one would dare to say he didn’t play well. 

Off stage, he immediately beelines it for his dressing room, avoiding the band and the crew altogether. He wants to be alone. Though being alone never really affords him the solace that he expects it to, it is at least better than being watched by thousands upon thousands of eyes, tracking his every move, blown up on giant screens. 

He storms down the hall, pushes his door open, and then stops dead in his tracks. 

Derek Hale is here, sitting on the couch with Boyd, straightening up as soon as he sees Stiles. Stiles’ entire body goes lax – where before, he was tense and anxious to not be seen anymore, he’s letting all of that go in the surprise of seeing him. 

“You asshole,” Stiles accuses, stepping into the room as a slow smile spreads across his face. “You’ve got to stop doing this.”

“Doing what?” Derek feigns innocence, standing up and gesturing for Stiles to come closer. Minutes earlier, Stiles couldn’t think of anything better than locking himself up in a room alone to drink himself to sleep, and now, he can’t think of anything better than getting a hug from Derek Hale. 

Stiles walks into Derek’s arms and closes his eyes. He smells like familiar cologne, and himself, and it’s something that has become a great source of comfort for Stiles. It reminds him of being safe and warm and held and touched gently and never yelled at and always understood. “Showing up out of nowhere.”

“You like it,” he pulls away and looks Stiles in the face, a small smile on his lips. They stare at one another for a second, eyes searching each other’s faces, and Stiles could melt into him. Just drip, drip, drip into a puddle, mix with Derek, just so he’d always feel this way. It’s not necessarily happy, because really, these days, Stiles rarely is, but it is something that Stiles never gets to feel, around anyone else, except maybe for Boyd. 

Safe. That’s what it is. Because Derek is solid and honest and trustworthy and stable. He keeps his word. He eats tacos with a fork. 

Boyd clears his throat, uncomfortable, because these two have been staring at each other silently for at least ten uninterrupted seconds, and that’s fucking weird. Stiles blinks and shakes his head, allowing himself to smile. “You look nice,” he comments, gesturing to Derek’s clothes – he honestly looks the same as he always does, in jeans and a t-shirt, but he also honestly looks nice. “You’re wearing the green shirt I like.”

“Because you like it,” he tips his head in acknowledgment, and Stiles goes red in the face. He and Derek have been fucking for months on end by this point, and the guy can still make him blush. “I thought I’d take you for a late dinner, if you’re hungry.”

“Uh, starving,” he admits, even though he had eaten a sandwich before going up on stage. He hadn’t actually enjoyed or tasted the thing, anyway, and Derek knows all the cool places open late in the city because he always does, so his stomach growls in anticipation. “You’re always showing up and then stuffing me full of food.” Among other things. 

“Someone has to,” he gestures to Stiles’ skinny frame and smirks. 

“I won’t complain.”

“The show went really well tonight.”

“You watched?” 

“Of course I did,” he cocks his head to the side and makes a face, like Stiles is being so silly. “As if I’d ever miss a chance to watch you.” 

Stiles blushes, again. All day he’s been this miserable lump who slept too late and had to physically restrain himself from going off on another bender, but now, with Derek Hale, he’s all smiles and blushing, as though the rest of the day hadn’t happened at all. The thought occurs to Stiles that Derek has definitely earned a blowjob and really, if Boyd weren’t here, Stiles would give him one without hesitating – he’d just push Derek down onto the couch, get on his knees, and suck him off with no preamble, ask for nothing in return.

The urge to do it anyway is fairly strong. 

But, Stiles would never scar Boyd for life, that way. So he just stands there and thinks about it, while Derek guides him forward and starts talking about what kind of food they should get and the places he thinks Stiles might like. Boyd, of course, tags along, but he rides in the passenger seat with Derek’s driver while Stiles and Derek stuff themselves into the back.

Derek says he wants a burger and Stiles agrees, so they go to a bar that’s loud and filled with people talking, dancing. They get a table in the seating area but towards the back, because Stiles always has to sit in the back wherever he goes, so there’s a view of the entire bar. Stiles can see the front door, the dance floor packed with people and lights, the actual bar, and the doors leading into the kitchen. 

Derek sits next to him instead of across from him, so they can talk to each other without having to shout. He moves in close to Stiles’ ear and says, “you are literally never sexier to me than when you have a guitar in your hands.” 

Stiles smiles and leans in to Derek’s ear. “You are never sexier to me than when you say shit like that to me.” 

Derek likes that response, so he grins, all teeth, movie star, big celebrity, the smile that makes Stiles’ heart clench up. “I could watch you play a thousand shows and never get bored of it.” 

“Oh, you’ll get bored,” Stiles challenges. “I bore myself sometimes.”

“Because you don’t know how great you are.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “You are really good at getting into my pants, is all this is.” 

“I know that.”

“Ugh,” Stiles makes a face, but he’s kidding, because Derek is right. Christ, fifteen minutes ago Stiles was vividly imagining putting the guy’s dick in his mouth. He leans in close again, and Derek ducks his head to present his ear a bit better. “You know, I was having a really shitty day before you came.” 

“What happened?”

Stiles isn’t sure where to begin with that. He doesn’t know if Derek keeps tabs on baseball, because baseball has been a taboo subject in their friendship since day one, and he’s well aware of that – so he doesn’t know if Derek knows that Matt Harding is in town, at the same time as Stiles. And then even if Derek did somehow know that, would he think it were something that could possibly upset Stiles? Because it’s stupid to get upset about it. It is. It’s paranoid, and it’s useless to get himself worked up over it. 

“I’m just so tired of tour,” he lies, and then immediately feels like shit for it. Derek has never told him a single lie, not a white lie or a stupid lie or anything, but apparently Stiles can fucking lie to him all day long. It makes him feel like absolute trash, because Derek came all the way here from New York to see Stiles’ show and take him out and be nice to him, and Stiles is going to sit and lie. And it is not the only lie he has told Derek. 

Derek asked about the meeting with Lydia. He asked what was so important, he asked what it was about, and Stiles lied to his face. Because Stiles knows that Derek would be livid with him, for having this huge bombshell in his possession, and doing nothing with it. Derek wouldn’t let it happen. Derek would take it to whoever he had to take it to, to get the situation taken care of. 

Stiles knows all that. Which is why he lied and said nothing had happened in the meeting with Lydia. Derek does not need to know, is his reasoning, which is perhaps the truth, because it’s not any of Derek’s business. But it still feels bad. It feels like betrayal. Derek has been nothing but forthright, but Stiles hides things, like a dog with bones. 

“It’s almost over,” Derek tells him, sincere and encouraging, and Stiles feels worse. “Nashville is gonna be over so fast and then you’re on a break.”

Ah, break. A nice, long vacation. No tour, no press, no nothing. Just his birthday and Christmas and New Year’s, the best time of the year as far as Stiles is concerned. He looks away for a second, because he feels a bit silly asking this, but then he turns back and dares himself to look Derek in the face. “I assume you’re going back to California for Christmas with your family”

“Of course,” he nods. “Are you…?”

“Yes,” he nods back. He had already spoken to his father about this, and his dad had more or less demanded that he come back and spend the holidays in his kid room, do Christmas with the McCalls just like old times. Stiles is not dreading it. In fact, he cannot say how excited he is to have a normal fucking Christmas. Last Christmas, he got drunk and ate chocolate all day by himself in Malibu, the worst place on earth to be on Christmas. And the year before that…well. It wasn’t good. “So, we’re both gonna be in California at Christmas.” 

Derek turns his body towards him some more, a smile spreading across his face. “Are you trying to ask me if I want to spend some of my Christmas with you?”

“No,” Stiles immediately lies, face going hot. Then, he clears his throat and shrugs a bit. “I mean. It just would make sense. You’re there, I’m there.” 

“Christmas at my house is no joke,” he tells Stiles this as if he’s warning him. “If my mother finds out, she’s going to drag you to Christmas Eve dinner with the entire family, Stiles. All seven sisters and my aunts.”

“You have several aunts, too?”

Derek nods his head, smirking. “They’re all divorced.”

Jesus Christ. So Derek’s Christmas is going to be a bunch of women around a table, and then himself, and then, against his own better judgment, Stiles. “Okay,” Stiles says this slowly, and Derek seems surprised. 

“Really. You’re going to come meet my entire family.”

“Well,” he shrugs, angling for nonchalant. “If there’s nothing better on television.”

Derek gets this look on his face, that Stiles can say he’s never seen before. It’s all, quietly awed, lips parted, eyes a bit big in his head. It takes a lot to actually stun Derek, or even surprise him really – but he is stunned. Because Stiles is willing to go to Derek’s house in the land of women, where they’re all going to flock to him and ask him a zillion questions and badger him about his life, his family, him and Derek. It’s a big ask, which is why Derek didn’t ask. But Stiles had accepted, none the less. 

Derek moves in close to Stiles, so close that his breath fans across Stiles’ neck, the hairs around his ear. “I can’t bring you back to meet my family before I lock it down.”

“Lock it down?” Stiles repeats. He’s pretending he doesn’t know what that means, but he does. 

“Stiles,” Derek says, giving him a look. 

“Oh, you mean, before you ask me for my hand.”

“No,” he smirks. “Before you say you want to be with me, for real. Only me.”

Only him. It’s been only him this entire time. Stiles struggles to imagine a world where it isn’t only him. Derek is the only one he’d let get near him, anymore. “Then you’d better make me say it,” he says, raising a single eyebrow. 

Derek blinks at him, stupefied. He says, “what the hell does that mean?”

Stiles cannot help himself. He grins. It almost hurts his face to smile that big, it’s been so long. “It means, I need you to convince me it’s not a huge, massive mistake to get into another relationship.” 

“You know me,” Derek says, but that’s not enough. 

“You think we’re not dating because I don’t want to be with you? That’s idiotic. I want to be with you, I want you to be around all the time, I want you, period. But I need,” he shakes his head, staring down at the table top. “I need…to be sure. I’m fucked up. You can’t just say let’s date and then everything is okay. I have to know you’re not going to…”

“…to what?”

Stiles looks at his hands. The callouses and scars from his guitars. The evidence leftover from all the shitty men he’s ever written about. “I need to know you’re not just going to be another shitty fucking record I have to play.”

“You think I’d give you a reason to write songs you hate playing,” Derek assesses, and Stiles shrugs. He is, after all, locked in to at least one more record with these fuckbags, and he is almost certain they are going to play mind games with him and coerce him into signing a second one with even more albums. He may not have a choice. Eventually, he’s going to have to write about Derek. 

The question is, what kind of shit is he going to have to write? 

“I thought I’ve been very clear, that I would rather fucking cut my hands off than do anything like that to you.” 

“I’m unhinged, remember?” He points to his head with a single finger. “I don’t trust anyone.”

Derek blinks at him. He frowns. “Not even me?”

Stiles takes in a deep breath, and he doesn’t answer that question. He really doesn’t have to. Derek knows the answer, he just doesn’t like it, he just doesn’t want it to be the truth, but he knows it, all the same. He knows. Stiles can’t trust like that anymore. Even before Matt, his faith in others, especially men, was dwindling down to fucking nothing. People have used him and gotten intimidated by him and fucked him just for the sake of saying they did it. People have let him down, have been record fodder, have been liars, and worst of all, people have abused him. In more ways than one. 

Surprisingly, instead of getting angry or upset, Derek just sits up straighter and says, “then I’ll earn it. Your trust, I’ll fucking earn it, you’ll see.” 

“You’d do all that work, just to be with me?” It seems unthinkable. Stiles has got enough emotional baggage he should really take a forklift with him instead of a body guard. It doesn’t spell out husband material, or even boyfriend material. 

Derek gives him a look. “A thousand times over.”

This is another _I love you_ without the _I love you_. It’s there in the subtext. Stiles knows it. Derek knows that Stiles knows it. Derek won’t actually say it, maybe just for fear that Stiles would get freaked out, but he will say that he’ll work for Stiles’ trust, and he’ll say that he’d sleep on the floor again and again if it meant sleeping next to Stiles, and it’s the same thing. 

It is the same fucking thing. Stiles isn’t equipped to do anything, with someone else’s love. It feels clumsy in his hands. He hasn’t been loved in so long; it took him a while, but see, he did eventually figure out that Matt never really loved him. That realization, after all was said and done, was perhaps the worst thing that Matt ever did to him. The abuse, the yelling, the name calling, the bruises, the cuts, the scars. All of that paled in comparison to the lies, really. The manipulation. Using that word, love, to get what he wanted out of Stiles because he knew what strings to pull. 

It is hard to trust that word, after something like that. Derek is understanding and patient, so he doesn’t use that word. It means the same, but it feels different. 

Their food comes, and Stiles learns that Derek eats hamburgers like his life depends on it; he slathers it in mustard and ketchup both, asks for extra bacon on the side just to stack it up on top of the burger, and rips into it like a wild animal. Sauce drips down his chin and he wipes at it with the back of his hand, then it winds up on his jeans, on his shirt, grease dripping everywhere. Stiles would be grossed out, but this is half of Derek’s appeal. He has the emotional intelligence of someone who isn’t a man, not even close, but he has all the sex appeal of someone who is definitely a man. Maybe Stiles is attracted to the way he eats – sue him. He likes manly guys. It’s half of what lands Stiles in hot water, to begin with. 

Stiles pushes another pile of napkins at him. “You are a fucking beast.”

“I love eating,” he says, mouth full. He doesn’t even touch the napkins, just goes right back to massacring his food with fervor. 

“How many push-ups are you going to have to do to work that burger off?”

“Hopefully none,” he finally grabs a napkin, swiping it across his face more perfunctory than anything else. “Maybe you’ll let me burn it off in your bed?”

Stiles laughs. He nearly chokes on a fry, he laughs so hard. “You’re so good at that.”

“At what?”

“Being sexy. You’re sitting there covered in burger grease and ketchup, and yet you can be so…”

“You haven’t answered my question. Can I fuck you tonight?”

“Okay,” Stiles shrugs, pretending like he hasn’t been fantasizing about it ever since the second he walked in and saw Derek sitting there in Stiles’ dressing room. Really, he thinks about sex with Derek all the time, and it’s an indulgence he allows himself. The sex is addictive. “Are you still, uh,” he rubs the back of his neck, “…coming to Nashville?”

Derek swallows the last of his burger and nods, fervently. “Of course I am, I promised, didn’t I?”

He did certainly promise it. And Derek Hale keeps his promises. Stiles traces the tabletop with his finger, done with his food even though half of it is still sitting on the plate. “I used to love Nashville. It was, like, my safe place, home away from home kind of a thing.” 

Derek wipes his hands with a napkin and listens. 

“Then, you know. I just sort of add it to the list of things I don’t have anymore.”

“You can always go back to Nashville, Stiles.”

“No,” he shakes his head, somber, staring at his fingers. “It’s…too much happened there. And what I wrote on the song is true, you know. The place is a big ocean of trauma.”

“Hopefully not forever,” he offers, because there really isn’t anything else to offer. Hopefully, someday, Nashville will not be the land of his torments any longer. It will not be the endless vast ocean where he drowns every night in his nightmares. Hopefully, some day, it will be just a place. He can’t dare to even dream that it could be what it used to be to him, but maybe, it will eventually be just…Nashville.

And anyway, he has a new city that he thinks about, when he wants a home away from home, thanks to Derek. 

He picks up his pint glass of water and takes a big drink out of it. As he does so, his eyes fall across the room. The dance floor and all the people, the music, the DJ, the televisions flashing images of music videos, the bar. He sets his glass down and right then, in that split second between having the glass firmly in his hand and letting it go, he sees an unmistakable set of broad shoulders.

He fumbles the glass. It spills the water across the table, shatters onto the ground underfoot. Stiles barely hears the sound of the glass breaking over the ringing in his ears. Stiles would recognize him from any angle, anywhere, no matter how dim the lighting, no matter where, no matter fucking anything. That is him. He hasn’t even turned around yet, and Stiles knows. 

Derek is surprised by the glass shattering. He jumps a bit, moving quickly to grab napkins to sop up the mess on top of the table, Boyd coming from his own table just across the way because he heard the glass and he thinks there’s a problem, people turning and looking, a waitress grabbing a broom, but Stiles is frozen still. 

All the blood has drained out of his face, so abruptly he feels it, that clammy feeling of going cold. Derek is cleaning up the water. Stiles stares. He stares. He can’t move. It feels like he’s alone, here, like the dance floor is empty, the music gone quiet, the place abandoned. It’s just Stiles, and him. No one else. 

He’s drinking something. He is turning around. Stiles has this thought of getting up and making a break for it. He could outrun him, this time. He could go for the back door before he even knows what’s going on, before he even notices Stiles sitting there – but then, Stiles is being silly. Matt knows Stiles is sitting here. 

He knew Stiles would be here. It’s the only god damn reason he’s here to begin with. 

Derek is still cleaning up the water, and the waitress is smiling and telling him not to worry about it, accidents happen, and Stiles is just…trapped. In his head he is somewhere else. This cannot be happening. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. 

When he turns, he looks right at Stiles, and they lock eyes across the room. He has got ice, ice blue eyes. His best feature. The one that Stiles sees the most, in his flashbacks. The way they looked that night, when he was trying to choke the life out of Stiles right underneath him. Stiles cannot forget it, could never dream of forgetting it, but it is different to remember it, and then to see it in person. 

“I need to leave,” he says, abrupt. He tears his eyes away from Matt and looks at the ground, a learned habit. “Derek, we need to leave.” 

“I’ll just pay the tab, and –“

“I need to fucking leave,” he half-shouts, and he stands so quickly he rattles the table. Derek’s own pint glass topples over, but it doesn’t shatter – it just makes a giant mess on the table. Derek jumps and tries to catch it too late, so his hands get wet, and he swears under his breath. 

Derek says, “what’s going on?”, and then he follows Stiles’ eye line. It’s not like Matt is all that hard to spot – he’s fucking six and a half feet tall, and not very many people are, so he sticks out like a sore thumb, standing over by the bar. He is still looking at Stiles. He is taking in the entire situation. Stiles is here, but then so is Derek, and so is Boyd, and he’s likely debating what his odds are of getting Stiles alone, or of even getting close enough to him, he’s thinking of how to get to him, he is, he’s going to try to –

“I need to get out of here,” he says again, more frantic. Derek sees Matt. He has pieced together what exactly the hell is going on, and he blinks. 

There is this split second where Stiles thinks that he will see that side of Derek that he hasn’t seen before. The side of him where he punches cars and can’t control himself, the side of him that threw a bar glass into Matt’s face for saying a single word to him, the side of him that Derek works very hard to rein in every single fucking day. He thinks that Derek is going to get up and flip the table over and charge across the bar to get in a public physical fight with the guy. 

But Derek stands up. He doesn’t flip the table, or start charging anywhere. He puts his hand on Stiles’ back and says, “let’s go.”

Stiles hesitates. Something in him, this old, beaten down part of him, is petrified to just up and leave. He’ll get in trouble for just up and leaving. It will all be worse for him if he just up and leaves. If will be better if he takes his licks now and gets it over with. This is insane thinking, backed into a corner thinking, leftover from years ago. 

But one look, right into those eyes, and Stiles is that person all over again. The one who never spoke unless directly spoken to, who was too afraid to move, to exist, to do anything at all without permission. Stiles had to work so fucking hard to not be that person anymore, and it’s all tumbling down around him, because of one look. 

Derek pushes on the small of his back, so Stiles blinks and realizes he’s not moving, shaking, tears welling up in his eyes, stuck to the spot. “Come on. Don’t look at him, let’s just go.” 

“I –“ he wants to say he can’t. He can’t. But Derek guides him forward and Boyd is there right next to him, and they push him. Stiles’ legs are shaking. He avoids what is left of the broken glass underfoot, and Derek throws money on the tabletop to cover the bill, and then they’re moving. 

Stiles keeps his eyes on the floor. 

It would be insanity for Matt to try and come over to him when he has both Boyd and Derek with him, but there is this irrational, petrified part of him that thinks he will try it. Stiles doesn’t know what Matt wants to do to him, he has never known what Matt would do if he ever got the opportunity to be close to Stiles ever again….but he knows it wouldn’t be good. 

Stiles kicked him out and locked him out and never said a word. He knows that infuriated Matt. Then he went and wrote and released an album that has people saying they hate him, they think he’s trash, has people booing him when he steps up to the plate, tweeting at him to go kill himself. There’s not a doubt in Stiles’ mind, that Matt is furious with him. 

Nothing good ever comes of that. 

But nothing happens here, tonight. Matt makes no moves to try and touch him or even get near him, and they leave. Out the door, into the chill night air, but Stiles feels claustrophobic, like he’s locked in a closet, like he’s locked himself in the bathroom again and Matt is going to break the lock at any second. He’s wide-eyed and shaking and still, only moving where Derek and Boyd move him.

In the car, he presses his hands to his face and shakes. Derek sits next to him, quiet, just there, his presence, and he likely doesn’t know what to do or say. “He came for me,” Stiles says, quiet, voice hoarse from the tears spilling out of his eyes. 

“You don’t know that,” Derek says, as Boyd climbs into the passenger seat and slams the door behind him. “It was a coincidence. That’s all.”

“No,” Stiles shakes his head, resolute. He knows. He’s not naïve. Not about him. “Someone posted that I was there, someone said it, and he came, he came to see me, he came to –“

“Stiles. You’re not thinking clearly.”

Derek moves to put his hand on Stiles’ back, to rub it, the way Stiles likes. But Derek is not dealing with the Stiles that he knows, right now. He’s dealing with a Stiles that he hasn’t met, yet. Stiles jerks away from the touch like Derek’s hand is on fucking fire, because he doesn’t want to be touched, he hates being touched, everyone is always fucking touching him all the god damn time. 

“He’s going to keep coming for me until he gets to touch me again,” he cries, shaking so hard he can barely speak, can barely move. The car starts moving, and Stiles barely notices. “He’s not going to stop until he gets his hands on me, you don’t get it, you don’t know him.”

“I know enough to –“

“You don’t know him,” Stiles growls. He keeps his face buried, bent over into the seat in front of him. He feels like an animal, like a circus tiger that’s been whipped one too many times and now can’t do anything but be violent, backed into a corner, forced to lash out. “He’s obsessive. He’s obsessed with me, you don’t fucking get it.” 

Derek makes this sound that’s crossed between a frustrated growl and a sigh, and Stiles flinches. It’s enough that Derek apologizes, takes a deep breath, starts over. “Baby. You’re scaring the shit out of me, right now.” 

Derek thinks _he’s_ fucking scared. That’s funny. 

“He’s going to hurt me,” he cries, and he sits up straight, just so he can heave in great big breaths, leaning back up against the seat and wiping at his eyes, frantic. It’s dark in the car. They’re on the freeway, and it is pitch dark outside – Derek is illuminated only by passing headlights and the glow from the dashboard up front. 

“He will never as long as I fucking live get the chance to do anything to you. He was just – he was just there. He’s not that stupid. It was a coincidence.” 

But it wasn’t. Stiles knows Matt better. He knows how Matt thinks. Derek doesn’t know what it’s like, to know someone as sick and fucked in the head as Matt Harding is, but Stiles knows him. He learned, the fucking hard way, what someone like Matt is really like. He will never stop, no matter how many years go by, no matter if Stiles stays quiet and never speaks up, stops making records, stops everything, it won’t matter. Matt wants Stiles. He wants to own him, and control him, and if he can’t have that, then no one gets to have it. Derek doesn’t fucking understand that, but Stiles does. 

“He’s going to kill me,” he says, certain of it. 

Boyd, abruptly, turns in his seat from the front and looks Stiles dead in the eye. “You know god damn well you could stop that from happening. You had the opportunity and you turned it down.” 

Stiles glares at him. “It’s not that simple.”

“It is that simple.”

“So those are my fucking options!” Stiles shouts at him, and his voice is loud, shrill, panicked. “Fucking let him kill me or let everyone else do it for him!” 

“It would be hard,” Boyd concedes, his tone even, like he’s working to not shout right back in Stiles’ face, “but god dammit, Stiles, he’s a fucking psychopath. You can’t just let him –“

“What are we talking about?” Derek demands, because he’s out of the loop, he’s ten steps behind, because Stiles lied to him. He doesn’t know there’s a tape. 

Stiles ignores him. He presses his hands to his eyes and he just wants to scream. He wants to open the car door and roll out even though it’s going sixty miles an hour. He just wants this to be fucking over already. He is so tired. 

“You shouldn’t be allowed to make this decision,” Boyd barks. “You are so fucking screwed up, you can’t even fucking –“

“Hey,” Derek shouts at Boyd to get him to shut the hell up, and it works. He turns to Stiles. He puts his hands on Stiles, gently, slowly, to show he means no harm, and Stiles doesn’t push him away this time. “Deep breath. In, out. It’s okay.”

Stiles can’t stop thinking about his eyes. Icy blue. Cruel. The way he’d mock Stiles for crying, for begging him to stop, for his music, everything he did. 

“It’s okay. It’ll all be okay.” 

“He’s going to kill me,” he says, again, maybe because it’s all he can think to say. 

“I will kill him first,” Derek promises, voice even. 

And Derek Hale keeps his promises.


	7. Fucking Finish It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay yes I did add one more chapter but it is mostly an epilogue I swear lmfao.

Stiles used to be completely obsessed with dessert. He’s got a sweet tooth the size of a Buick. He could eat an entire box of Girl Scout cookies in one sitting, polish off huge bags of Halloween candy in less than a week, and would only drink coffees that had more sugar than actual caffeine in them. He loved cookies probably more than most things in this life, maybe even more than he loved music. He used to make cookies with his mother for Christmas and his birthday, and then after she died he’d just do it by himself to keep the tradition alive. He got pretty good at it. It was just a silly side hobby that he had. 

Stiles’ love language has always been acts of service. He used to think that if he wanted Matt to really love him, to not want to hurt him, then he’d just have to try harder. He would do the dishes, scrub the bathroom so clean it would sparkle and shine, make sure the bed was always made, folded Matt’s clothes, cleaned his shoes, and he would make cookies. He sincerely believed that if he made cookies good enough, Matt would love him more. It was an obsession of his, because Matt’s stomach was like a never ending dump truck, to shove as much food at him as possible. He never really learned how to cook actual meals, but he could bake, so that’s what he did. 

Matt didn’t really appreciate anything Stiles ever did for him. Stiles would spend an entire day cleaning and organizing and setting things up the way Matt liked, in anticipation of affection in return. Stiles never got any affection. He’d sweep the floors and then Matt would throw a glass against the wall, so he’d have to sweep them again. He’d go out and find the oddly specific and expensive brand of liquor Matt liked, and then Matt would get too drunk and hurt him. He’d bake cookies, and Matt would throw them out, just to make Stiles upset. It was never, ever, enough. 

It’s been a long time, because Stiles lost touch or taste for things he enjoyed for a very very good chunk of time during Matt and in the aftermath of him, but he decides to make cookies again. He doesn’t even need to consult the recipe – it’s all muscle memory, anyway. It used to be therapeutic, rolling balls of cookies together and then dipping them in sugar, over and over. He used to make things just to give himself time to think. As a matter of fact, the entire concept of his fourth album came to him while he was making cinnamon rolls for himself one night. 

He has to dig deep into the recesses of his cabinets to find a tin for them, but he finds one, buried in the back, leftover from Valentine’s Day at least five years ago. He tucks them all in, one by one, and seals them up tight. He sits and stares at them for a while. Then, he does the dishes, just for something else to do. When he’s done with that, he stares out the window for a long time. 

In the corner of the room, his piano sits and calls to him. He’s been doing his best to ignore it, because he only really has one thing to write about anymore, and he doesn’t want to write about that. He’s got this learned aversion to writing songs, because Matt hated it so much, and then when Stiles finally broke out of that and wrote all those songs for his newest one, they were taken from him before he even had the time to process their contents. 

He’s scared if he writes about Derek, it’ll fuck everything up. It’ll change them. It’ll freak Derek out. It will make Derek not like him anymore. It’ll turn whatever it is they have into a fucking circus, a clickbait article, something for everyone to hyper-analyze and pick apart. 

But he just cannot stop thinking about it. They’re already there, in his head, he just hasn’t written them down, he just hasn’t settled on melodies, he just hasn’t gotten the chord progressions right. He runs his hands through his hair and shakes his head. 

Fuck it, he thinks. 

He goes and opens up his piano bench – he hasn’t opened this fucking thing in so long, he almost forgets what’s inside of it. He’s got tons of old pieces of paper, half finished songs, ones that he finished but didn’t turn out very good, some of them dating back to high school. He saves all of them, even the particularly bad ones, in case he can pull something out of them for a different piece of work, like taking organs out and putting them into someone else. 

He finds an old notebook at the bottom, and a pen. Then, he sits at his piano, opens it up, and stares at the keys. It has been so long, Stiles almost half thinks he won’t know how to do it anymore. Creating. He puts his hand on his mouth and looks out the window, at the New York skyline, and he wonders where he should even begin. So much has happened, since he met Derek Hale. He thinks about that night, when Derek first came to this apartment and smiled at him and drank Stiles’ wine and told him that _Josh Perry thinks you and I would get along._ He thinks about when he went to Derek’s place and saw the giant mirror and laughed so hard he cried, when Derek took him to the pretty restaurant with the plants and how nice he had been, when Derek was here again and fucked him on the couch after getting tacos. 

He thinks about Vancouver. The way the moon looked on the water outside Derek’s back doors, the wine, the food, the sex, when Derek took him out and showed him all his favorite spots and he put his hand on the small of Stiles’ back like he was soft, or small, when Stiles is neither of those things. Summer time. The tour. Paris. Most of all, Paris. His pink carpet. Lemon trees. 

Stiles sits up straight and digs his phone out of his pocket, setting it up to record so he won’t forget anything he comes up with, and then he clicks his pen. The songs really are all already there in his head, because even when he didn’t realize it, even when he tried to stop it from happening, he always was writing about Derek. In the bedroom in Vancouver, he wrote one. And in the hotel room in Paris when Derek set up all the pillows on the floor and pulled him in close, he wrote one. And then in Boston, which turned out to be a terrible night, a horrible fucking night, Stiles still wrote one. 

It’s ironic, how when he wrote Nashville, he was thinking of a blue bedroom, an ocean, the place where he goes every night to drown. When he writes Vancouver, he thinks of another body of water – but it isn’t bright blue, it’s dark, it’s deep, and when it pulls him under, it doesn’t drown him. It just takes him in, cradles him, keeps him safe from the rest of the world. The back patio, the green green grass, and Derek, then the water. 

When Derek comes over the next day, it’s mid-morning, and he’s got a bag with him. He slumps it down onto the ground and says, “it’s fucking freezing out there,” with a smile on his face. It is fucking freezing out there, as a matter of fact – it doesn’t typically snow in New York until at least December, but they got a doozy of a storm last night, so when Stiles looked out his window when he got up, all he saw was white, far as the eye could see. 

“I got you something,” Derek says, handing a coffee cup to Stiles once he’s within reach. “It’s a dirty chai latte.”

“Of course you remember my coffee order,” Stiles rolls his eyes but he takes it all the same, gleefully, immediately taking a drink. Jesus, Derek even remembered that Stiles prefers oat milk. Derek is unfurling himself from his coat and his scarf, hanging both up on the hook beside where Stiles’ hoodies and coats are all lined up on the wall. Stiles turns and heads to the kitchen island where he had left his cookies the night before, gathers the tin in his arm, moves back to Derek. He thrusts them in Derek’s direction and says, “I made these for you.”

Derek is surprised. “You made me something?” 

More than one thing, actually. 

He takes the tin and holds it in both of his hands. “It’s got a big heart on it,” he comments, like he finds this completely out of Stiles’ character, to own anything with a great big red heart on it. 

“It’s from Valentine’s Day,” he waves his hand, like it doesn’t really matter. “It’s all I had to put them in.” Stiles could have just put them on a plate with some Saran Wrap, really, but he’s not about to admit that the heart tin was, kinda sorta, intentional. 

Derek pulls the lid off and stares inside. He’s baffled. His eyebrows go all the way up into his hairline, when he looks at Stiles. “You can bake?” 

Stiles shrugs. “It’s a hobby.”

“You _bake_?”

“Not so much anymore, but, yes.”

Derek picks a cookie up and holds it, like he half expects that it’s a hologram or something. It’s a sugar cookie, with light green icing on top because green is Derek’s favorite color, and some white sprinkles. “You went out and bought these.”

“No,” Stiles smiles. “I made them. Try it.”

Derek does not have to be asked twice. He shoves the entire thing into his mouth and chews it, chews, swallows. “That’s good,” he says, and this, too, is said like he’s surprised by it. Like he thought that Stiles would feed him bad cookies as a joke, or something. He picks up another one and stuffs it into his mouth, all at once, swallows it. “Why didn’t I know that you baked?”

“It’s not that interesting,” he shrugs his shoulders, drinks his coffee. “I just wanted to say, you know. Thanks. For coming. To Nashville. I know it’s not…you know.” It’s not going to be all that much fun, Stiles is certain of it. He’s not going to want to go out to a restaurant, because he’s been to all the good restaurants with Matt, and it was horrible. He’s not going to want to go get a drink somewhere, because he went to all the good bars with Matt, and that was horrible, too. He’s going to want to sit in his hotel room with the curtains shut so he can pretend he’s not actually in Nashville, until they force him to get up there and sing. 

Derek has got another cookie in his hand, his fourth one, and he’s biting into it. He says, mouth full, “if there’s more cookies, I’ll go anywhere. These are insanely good. How come you’ve never made cookies before? You’ve been holding out on me.” 

Stiles reaches out and takes the tin out of Derek’s hands before he eats the entire fucking thing in one go. “Save some for later,” he says, clicking the lid back into the place and then setting it aside, on the coffee table. “You wanna put your stuff in the bedroom?”

“Oh, yeah,” he smiles, as he bends down to pick up the bag he had dropped once he got inside. “I’ve never seen your bedroom in this apartment before.”

Right. Stiles has never let Derek in there, even though they’ve had sex about a dozen times, here. Always in the living room or the kitchen, never the bedroom, where it actually makes sense. Stiles has been tense all day, thinking about having Derek in there, because no other man has slept in that bed with Stiles aside from Matt. No one else. Just Matt. 

Stiles leads the way, padding on the carpet with Derek hot on his heels. He flicks the bedroom light on and gestures his hands out like _ta-da_ , as Derek steps inside and takes in the sight of it. It’s just a bedroom. Misplaced closet door, big bed, Stiles’ side table with some notebooks and a glass of water and a lamp, a window with the blinds shut up tight. It’s nothing. Just a room. 

“This is your side, I take it,” Derek smiles, gesturing to where Stiles’ notebooks and his special pillows are. Stiles nods. Derek moves to the other side, the one that’s always empty and cold, and sets his bag down on the ground. Then, he sits down on the edge of the bed and starts to take his shoes off, one by one. 

Stiles had thought that seeing Derek sitting there on the bed would freak him out, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t give him Matt flashbacks at all. It’s just Derek. 

“Can I talk to you for a second?” He says, moving over to sit down right next to Derek. Derek nods, turning his neck to look Stiles right in the face. “Um. We haven’t really gotten a chance to talk since Boston.”

After what happened, Stiles went directly to bed and barely said goodnight to Derek. He just got out of the car and waved and went off with Boyd, leaving Derek alone to drive through the night to get back home to New York. Sleeping together just wasn’t an option, especially not having sex, and Derek definitely took that hint. He hadn’t mentioned it in their subsequent texting, planning for this trip and wishing each other good mornings and good nights, but Stiles knows that it hurt Derek’s feelings, to just…be left, like that. He understood, but understanding something doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt, still. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he means it, because he is. “I just took off. I couldn’t – I’m no good, when it comes to…”

“You don’t have to explain or anything,” Derek insists, putting his hand on Stiles back. “There’s no right way to react in that sort of a situation.”

Sometimes, Stiles gets irritated, by how patient and kind and understanding that Derek can be, because Stiles really doesn’t deserve it. He wants to grab Derek by his shoulders and shake him and ask him to hit Stiles, or yell at him, or call him some terrible name, or say he’s talentless, nothing, uses people for his own gains, just treat him like Stiles is used to being treated. It’s almost easier, that way. Familiar. He looks at his hands and he frowns. Normal people don’t think getting beaten and screamed at is familiar. 

“I’m not good,” he repeats. “You came all the way to see me and I just left like that, it wasn’t right.” 

“I’m not upset with you,” he insists, shaking his head. “Why are _you_ upset?”

“I’m feeling anxious, like – like maybe you’re starting to see how I really am, and it’s not all just…sex and music and fun stuff all the time. I have problems. That’s not sexy.” People think it’s sexy, in the abstract. Like drinking and partying so much you can’t remember what day is which is fun, smoking cigarettes to quell the overwhelming anxiety is hot, dressing grungy because it’s easier than putting himself together is attractive. “And now you’re coming with me to fucking Nashville, and it’s going to get worse there. Trust me. It’s not going to be a fun trip. It’s going to be miserable.”

Derek thinks for a moment. He looks at Stiles’ closet door and he probably has noticed that it doesn’t match the rest of the room, sticks out like a sore thumb, and he probably wonders why the hell that could be. “What is it about that place? You’ve gotta give me something to work with, here.” 

Oh, Derek probably does deserve an explanation. He’s going, against his better judgment, and he deserves to know why it’s going to be like a fucking death march. Stiles takes in a deep breath and shrugs his shoulders, as though it doesn’t really matter, even though it does. It fucking matters. This chapter of his relationship with Matt is the most important one. It’s the one where the hole Stiles had been digging himself into got filled over with concrete, with him still inside of it. 

“Things were getting bad,” he starts, voice low, and Derek listens. “Like, really bad. I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. And it would be this entire cycle, where I couldn’t physically get up I was so fucking miserable, and that would make Matt angry because he hates laziness, so he’d yell at me and hit me and just – it was bad. I was in this dark place. I thought I was going to die. Couldn’t write anything, and even if I wanted to, Matt would go ballistic on me if I tried.”

“He didn’t like you making music?” Derek furrows his brow, like that makes no sense. “That’s your entire thing. If he didn’t like you doing that, why was he interested in the first place?”

“He didn’t like that it was something I had that he couldn’t control,” he says, and Derek seems quietly stunned by that information. Like he thinks that’s insane. Derek has likely, and thankfully, never met someone like Matt, who’s sick in the head like that, so to imagine someone being that way is almost impossible. “But, Nashville was my safe space. I figured, we’ll go there and things will get better. It was just before spring training was going to start. It was the dead of winter, and we went to the Nashville place. And it got…worse.”

“Worse,” Derek repeats. He can’t imagine it being any worse than what Stiles just described. 

“It just. He just. It was like he knew there was something wrong with me, but he didn’t really care? Like, he could tell I wasn’t doing okay, and it made him mad. I’d just want to sit on the couch and cry and he’d go apeshit on me for that,” he laughs, like it’s funny, because it almost is – all Stiles had done was sit and cry, and that made Matt so angry he’d flipped the coffee table over. “He’d force me to go out to restaurants with him and then I wasn’t allowed to say anything to anyone else, because he was so paranoid and jealous all the fucking time. I was barely allowed to talk to Boyd, for Christ’s sake. There was nothing I could do right.” 

Derek rubs at his face and he’s quiet, absorbing all of this information, piece by piece. 

“It just got so, so bad. Every second of every day was like…hell. My entire life was just being miserable, and being miserable lead to me getting hurt, and getting hurt lead to me crying, and crying lead to me getting yelled at for being a little bitch. Over and over. Every single god damn day. I just kinda knew, like…he was going to kill me, eventually. For a bit there, I didn’t even really give a shit about that.” 

Yeah. For a week or so there, at the end, Stiles even fantasized about it. He was so, so deep down in the pit, it was hard to imagine a life where he wasn’t being tormented, so then it was hard to imagine life really being worth living. 

“Then, you know, he actually did try to kill me and it woke me up. I was like, holy shit. You know? Holy shit. What am I doing? I’m just gonna let this asshole – you know? No way. I locked him out and, well, you know the rest. But now, that whole city is just sort of tainted, by the memories of what happened during that month. Part of it is that I up and left like a bat out of hell, because I had to go, and then I turned the entire city into this haunted house in my head. But then part of it is that…I had to fucking crawl my way back to being a human being again. And step one was getting the hell out of that fucking place. Going back feels like I might get trapped as that person again.”

That person, who was barely really even alive. Who bowed and scraped for Matt’s approval and never received it, not once. Who would go quiet and still instead of ever fighting back. 

Stiles had really expected Derek to be silent, or to just put his arm around Stiles and hold him, or…nothing, really. What the hell is someone supposed to say to all that shit? If someone said all that to Stiles, he’d have no fucking clue where to begin, how to help, what to do. 

Derek says, “you gotta go to fucking therapy,” point blank. 

“Music is my therapy,” he argues, and in much of his life, that has been the truth. 

“No. Music is an outlet. Baby,” he takes one of Stiles’ hands in both of his own, and sandwiches it there, pressing it, cradling it. “What you went through, I cannot fucking imagine it. I’m worried about you. I worry about you every god damn day. You need to get professional help.” 

“What are they going to do? Tell me to cry it out?”

“Where are you getting all this bullshit from?” He furrows his brow and shakes his head. “Who has been telling you all this shit about therapy?”

Stiles shrugs. “My dad.”

“Oh, right. The guy who can’t have even the beginning of a conversation with his son about this. Go figure.” 

“He’s not so bad,” Stiles defends instantly. “He loves me, he just….”

“…has no fucking clue how to care for one’s mental health, yeah. I know you’re stubborn and you’re going to do whatever the hell you want, and therapy isn’t a magic band-aid you can put on these things to make them better. But you need to talk to someone. I’m a good start and you can tell me anything, but you need someone who can…who can help. Really help.”

Stiles stares at Derek’s socked feet, where they rest on the carpeted floor down below. He knows that Derek is probably right. He knows that he can’t expect to go through life, drinking and writing music and touring it and fucking Derek, thinking all that is going to help him. 

He went through something. He can admit it. He had his life taken away from him, his agency, his everything, and he watched it all get smashed, over and over. That’s not something that liquor can cure. It is not something sex can fix. But it’s hard for him to imagine, that going into some little room in LA and crying and telling some stranger what happened, is the answer. It seems ridiculous. 

“C’mere,” Derek says, pulling Stiles in close against his body. He wraps his arms around Stiles and holds him, tight and sure. Stiles grabs onto Derek’s middle and holds on for dear life, because he’s finally found something in his life that doesn’t make him feel shitty, doesn’t demand anything from him, doesn’t tell him where to be or how to be, and he’s petrified, completely, of losing it. 

“I just get so fucking angry sometimes,” he says to Derek’s stomach, and Derek huffs a quiet laugh.

“I know that feeling pretty well.”

“It used to be I’d just be scared, or sad, or lonely. But now when I think about him, I get so fucking mad. He took... Everything. Every god damn thing.”

Derek hugs him tighter. 

“I hate him so god damn much.”

“Good,” Derek tells him. 

“I hope he loses every game he ever plays for all eternity. I hope he fucks everything up and loses his contract. I hope he winds up totally poor.”

“I hope he gets tofu every time he orders chicken,” Derek tacks on – it’s silly and stupid, so Stiles laugh. He pulls away from Derek’s arms and smiles a bit, trying to think up his own. 

“I hope he gets coal for Christmas.”

“I hope his Christmas tree catches on fire and it burns his house down.”

“I hope…that if the aliens come, they take him and do, like, experiments on him.” 

Derek laughs. “Like, what kind of experiments?” 

“I don’t know. It’s alien stuff, our human minds couldn’t comprehend. Like, he’s their guinea pig for their human chromosome experiments. They shave all his hair off and make him eat dog food.”

“Jesus Christ,” Derek’s eyes go big and he laughs. “What possible gain is there, making a human eat dog food?”

“Because it satisfies me up here,” he points to his temple. “It’s what he deserves.” 

What Matt really deserves isn’t necessarily revenge, and it’s not necessarily mean or cruel or any of the above to do it to him. What he really deserves is justice. What he did to Stiles, what he spent two years doing to Stiles, it wasn’t right. It cannot be forgiven. Even if he went off and got better and they fixed his head somehow, it wouldn’t matter. A lifetime of atonement for what he did – that’s what he deserves. He could never in ten lifetimes ever make it up, what he did. Never. 

Stiles thinks of that video, and the power it holds, sitting in a flash drive somewhere safe in Lydia Martin’s LA house. In a safe, probably, locked up where no one will be able to get to it. She did, after all, pay millions of dollars for it. Most of her fortune, most likely. Stiles knows it’s unfair to her, his friends, to sit on it like it’s nothing – and most of all, it is unfair to those who will come after Stiles. If there is someone out there who’s being charmed by Matt right now, it is unfortunately Stiles’ job to stop it from happening. It isn’t fair, Stiles has said as much before, that his entire life needs to be sacrificed up to the greater good of getting Matt put where he belongs, but life isn’t fair. 

He knows he has to. He just wants more time. Is that selfish? Yes. But he’s doing his god damn best. 

Stiles fiddles with his fingers. He remembers his coffee, sitting forgotten on the bed side table, so he reaches over and grabs it, taking a big old sip since it’s cool enough now to be chugged. It is so god damn good. Stiles is lucky, to have a friend who will bring him his favorite coffee without needing to be asked or prompted. 

Friend. Stiles could honestly laugh at that. Derek is not his friend, not even fucking close. 

“So, anyway. All that was to say I’m really sorry I’m dragging you along on this trip,” he takes another big sip of his coffee. “It’s selfish of me, but I need you there.”

“Anywhere you need me, I’ll be,” he promises, smiling so his eyes crinkle at the corners. Stiles likes this smile the best, so he smiles back before he can help himself. “Have they got you put up in a hotel?”

“Yup,” he sighs. Since it’s the finale, it’s all got a bit more fan fare around it than normal. He’s not getting put on the tour bus, they are flying him out and putting him in a hotel for two nights, while everyone else has to set up the stage and get it all ready for the big show. They had suggested that Stiles do something different, on account of it being the big last show, but he doesn’t want to do something different. 

He wants to do the same show he has been playing for months. The one he has memorized. The one where he doesn’t even need to think about what he’s doing or singing. That one. 

“You are really chugging that coffee,” Derek comments, watching Stiles glug down another big sip. 

“I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, so I need the caffeine.” 

“What were you up to? Baking cookies all night?” 

Stiles hesitates. In the past, when he has written about people, there have been various different reactions. For people who weren’t in his life anymore, he’d not even send a fucking email to warn them. He’d just send it out into the world and everyone would figure out exactly who it was, and then occasionally one of these guys would get rip roaring angry and send him a ranting letter about what a piece of shit he is, how dare he. Stiles always found that funny. For people who were still in his life, people he wrote love songs about while he was still dating them, they’d think it was great. The ones who weren’t complete jackasses would, at least. 

To be immortalized in Stiles’ work, to have been a muse to him, he always thought would be a compliment. Then Matt came along. He said it was a violation. Even the one lone love song Stiles had written about him, offered up to him as another one of his acts of service, Matt fucking hated. He said it was trash. What Stiles does is garbage. Stiles always thought Matt just didn’t get it – what he did. If he came to the shows, if he saw how his work moves people, if he could just get it…but, that was never the issue. It was never the issue. 

Now, Stiles has got this weird feeling, about having written songs about Derek. He doesn’t know what Derek will think. He really is afraid of losing him, more than he could ever admit out loud, and he’s scared that he’s going to send everything to hell, just by doing what he does. 

He clears his throat and sits up. He’s told Derek some lies recently, some big ones, and Derek does not fucking deserve that – so he won’t lie, again. “I was actually, um – well, I’ve been writing.” 

Derek is, thankfully, happy to hear this. He says, “no way,” with his eyebrows up, a smile crawling across his face. “You haven’t written in so long.”

“Yeah, no, it’s – I’m –“ he struggles to find the words. “I’m just. Writing really is helpful to me, I know it’s not, like, that much of a – you know. But it’s like self-care,” there’s that word again. “Making things, it really makes me feel…like a person. I can’t explain it.”

He shoves his face into his coffee and doesn’t watch Derek’s reaction. “I would love to hear some,” Derek says.

“Oh, that’s okay,” Stiles waves his hand. 

“Don’t be shy,” Derek prods – he presses his index finger into Stiles’ stomach, a ticklish spot, so Stiles yelps and pulls away with a laugh. “Play some for me, come on.” 

Stiles sighs and looks away, at the floor, feeling the blush creeping up on his face. God, he hasn’t felt like this since he was in fucking high school. Back when everyone thought he was a big loser for wanting to be a songwriter, back when no one thought he was going to be able to make it, in his stupid shitty little hometown. “Well, the thing is,” he starts, and then clears his throat. “They’re kinda about…you. And me. You and me.”

Derek stares at the side of his face, and then Stiles finally plucks up the courage to look directly at him, right in the eyes. He seems…shocked. “Me?” He points to himself, like he can’t believe it. “You wrote about me?”

“Just a couple,” he waves his hand again. “A few. A handful. Six, seven.”

“ _Seven_?”

“They were just buzzing around in my head, you know?” He gets nervous. When he gets nervous, he talks too much – it’s one of his more embarrassing character traits. “I had been thinking of it for a long time, most of them. Like, for me, I’m always imagining writing something, even when I don’t mean to, because it’s just how my brain works. I can’t just…I don’t know. I just didn’t want to write them because I was nervous you’d think it was shitty, and we’re not even really together, so –“

“You wrote seven god damn songs in a single night?”

“Mostly,” he mumbles, and then starts nervously chewing on his thumbnail. “It just kinda…spilled out. Once I start it’s hard to stop.”

“And they’re all about me.”

“Well. Yeah.”

“I will get down on my knees and beg you to play one for me, I mean it,” and he does. He is dead serious. He would prostrate himself before Stiles to get him to play for him. It is flattering. It’s been so long since someone has felt this way, about being in Stiles’ work. 

“Um, okay,” he laughs, high, tight. Nervous. He gets up and they go sit at the piano, where he grabs his notebook from the night before and starts pulling it open, finding the page he’s looking for. His hands are shaking, he notices.

Derek sits right down next to him on the bench, watching as Stiles finds the page and then sets it up in his music stand. “Um,” he says, and then he nervously fiddles with a couple of keys. “This is the one that’s almost all the way there. The rest are sort of half baked. Um. This one I pretty much finished.” 

“What’s it called?”

Stiles bites his lip. “Uh, well. Working title is Vancouver, but I may change it.”

Derek blinks. He’s surprised. What’s there to be surprised about? That trip to Vancouver was everything to Stiles, at the time, and when he thinks back on it…it still is, everything. “You liked it there?”

“Oh, loved it,” he says, tinkering around with random chords for a second. 

“Play it,” Derek gestures, and Stiles hesitates a bit. He fumbles around on the keys and then just takes in a deep breath, and he plays it. The chorus, only, because it’s fully fleshed out and locked in. Stiles couldn’t imagine editing it anymore than this. 

He delves a bit into the bridge he’s still noodling with, and then sort of trails off and hits some random keys, shrugging his shoulders. “That’s the part I’m still working on, but you get the idea. Um. Do you hate it?”

“I do not hate it,” Derek says, and his voice is low. Stiles turns to look him in the face for the first time since this whole ordeal started, and he finds Derek looking very pensive. Serious, almost. Like he was listening intently, the way one listens to a book on tape or something. 

“Because if you hate it, I do not have to put out anything about you. I can come up with other shit. I just write what I know, and these days, what I know is you, so…and I can edit stuff out. Like, whatever you don’t want in there, whatever embarrasses you. Just don’t feel like –“

Derek grabs him. He puts both of his hands on Stiles, on his arms, and pulls him closer, smashing their lips together. Stiles is surprised, he makes a noise into Derek’s mouth and flails his arms a bit, one of his hands landing on the piano with a loud bang of the keys. Then, Derek pulls away, just for a second, and looks him right in the eye. 

Derek is not a liar. So, Stiles knows that he means it when he says, “there is no greater compliment to get from you, Stiles. You should know that.”

“Oh,” he murmurs. He doesn’t really know what to say. He doesn’t need to say much of anything, it would turn out, because Derek is kissing him again. Open mouthed, hurried, frantic, kissing. Derek touches him and Stiles leans into the touch, lets Derek kiss him on the neck, kiss his jaw, his cheek, then his lips again. The angle is a bit awkward, because they’re on a tiny piano bench that really was not made to house two fully grown men at any time, but they make it work, force it to work, because Derek apparently can’t keep his hands to himself.

Derek pulls away and tears his shirt off, over his head, and then tugs on the hem of Stiles’, for him to do the same. “Off,” he says, commands more like, so Stiles hurries to rip it off and tosses it to the side. They kiss some more. Stiles feels Derek’s bare chest, because it’s firm and hard and he likes it, and Derek paws at Stiles’ belt buckle, undoes it, undoes the button, tears away from the kiss and stands. 

He picks Stiles up by his hips and tries to bend him over the piano. It really does not work. There’s no elbow space, barely any room for him to put himself – plus, this is Stiles’ most prized possession. He does not want to do something stupid like fuck on it and break it, somehow. So Stiles laughs and shoves Derek’s hands away, gestures to the bench. 

“Fine, yeah,” Derek agrees, breathless. He’s got this crazed look in his eye, like he’s going to absolutely lose his fucking mind if he can’t get inside Stiles in the next fifteen seconds. Stiles feels good, being wanted so god damn badly, especially after playing his music. 

No matter how many times he writes, how many times he plays for people, there is still something so vulnerable about it. To expose yourself and then be fucking wanted like that…it’s more than flattering. He takes his jeans off, then his underwear, and Derek hastily does the same, without taking his eyes off of Stiles for a single second. He’s got lube in his jeans pocket, because he seems to never travel anywhere without it, which is funny when they’re not fucking but incredibly helpful when they are. 

Stiles climbs up onto the bench, on his knees. He closes the keyboard lid, so he can rest his arms there without a really bad soundtrack in the background of their fucking, and Derek pushes him over, puts his hand on the back of Stiles’ neck, starts prodding at Stiles with the other. “I want you so fucking bad,” Derek tells him, sliding two wet fingers in. Stiles nods his head, because he wants Derek, too. “Anyone would be insane, to not want you to write about them.”

“You liked it?” Stiles asks. He looks over his shoulder, while Derek pushes a third finger in. Derek meets his eyes, direct, and honest. 

“Yes,” he says. “You are the most talented person I’ve ever met.”

“Whatever,” Stiles rolls his eyes. But Derek shakes his head – he will not allow Stiles to not believe it. 

“I mean it. Every day I wake up and can’t believe you want anything to do with me.”

Stiles doesn’t know what to do with that. Because sometimes, that’s how Stiles feels about Derek; that Derek must be nuts, totally off his rocker, to want anything to do with Stiles. 

Derek lines himself up and pushes in. Stiles is uncomfortable up here – his knees hurt, he’s bent at an awkward angle, and Derek doesn’t seem to be loving it too much, either. He moves a few times, but he curses under his breath after only thirty seconds and pulls out. “This isn’t…” he starts, and then he takes Stiles by the hips again and tugs him down, off the bench. “Fuck it,” he says, “get on the floor.”

“You’re kidding,” Stiles says, even as he slowly starts to do as he’s asked. He gets down on the floor, on his hands and knees, where he’s likely to get carpet burn from allowing this to happen, and Derek gets down right behind him. 

They’re really going to do it. They’re going to fuck on the floor. 

Derek slides in again, and this time, it’s better. He grips Stiles’ hips, and he pauses for a moment, just letting himself be inside of Stiles’ body. He moves only a bit, just enough that it rubs against Stiles’ g-spot, makes his dick twitch against his stomach. “You can write whatever you want about me, baby,” he says, and he means it, like he means every god damn thing he says. “Just make sure to include how good I am at making you come.” 

“Like the world didn’t take one look at you and know you were a sex god, already.”

“I just wanna hear you sing it, is all.” He thrusts, hard, then keeps going, so Stiles bears down on his upper arms and closes his eyes. He’s definitely going to get carpet burn. His arms are gonna be red for a day, at least, but he does not care. He arches his back and bites his lip and tells Derek he wants it harder, more, don’t stop, and Derek does anything that Stiles asks of him. 

Stiles comes on his fancy, expensive carpeting. It takes him by surprise. Derek fucks it out of him like it’s his job to do so, and Stiles keens, shakes, shudders as he ruins his floor. He says, “oh fuck,” and goes lax. Hs body keeps moving, more carpet burn, as Derek fucks his own orgasm into Stiles’ body. “My maid is going to be like, are you fucking kidding me?” 

“I’ll clean it up,” Derek grunts after he finishes. “I’ll clean it. Jesus.”

Derek slides out, and Stiles immediately falls down onto the ground, turning over onto his back. Derek gets down right next to him, so they’re lying next to each other, completely naked, staring at Stiles’ ceiling. “That was good,” Stiles tells him, and Derek nods like he agrees. “You like me writing about you, I take it.”

Derek turns his head, so then Stiles turns his, too. They’re only inches apart, staring at one another, blinking. Derek says, “I never dared to hope that you would. But I fantasized.” 

“About me writing songs about you?”

“Big time. Even if it was just, like, I fuck this guy as a joke. I wouldn’t care.”

Stiles laughs out loud. “Oh, that old banger. I fuck this guy as a joke, la la la.” 

“But I’m serious. You could write anything you wanted about me. I’d lick the floor you walk on, Stiles, I can’t believe you don’t know that.” 

Stiles turns away and looks back up at the ceiling. It’s weird to think about. Stiles has gotten so used to having to work, and work, and work, at keeping people around him, so they won’t abandon him. He forgot what it was like to have someone be willing to do that for him, too. And what’s really great, is that Stiles doesn’t ask. Derek does these things and says these things because he wants to, because he means them. 

It has been eons, since the last time that a man made Stiles feel this way. Even at the height of his obsession with Matt, Stiles never felt this way. “Derek, I’m gonna say something, and it’s kinda a bit much, but it’s the truth.”

“Okay.”

“You are important to me. You make me really happy. No one else…you know.” There really is no one else in his life who can make Stiles happy this way, anymore. There’s no one else Stiles trusts enough to let them try to make him happy this way. 

Derek leans over and kisses Stiles on the cheek, the forehead, the lips. He pulls away and says, “I feel the same about you.” 

Stiles drums his fingers on his bare chest. He stares at the ceiling and he feels silly, beyond silly, even asking this question, but Derek has been so kind and patient, he deserves to know that Stiles really isn’t just fucking him, at this point. That Stiles does not consider Derek to be just some guy he knows who he happens to fuck. “Do you maybe wanna…” he hesitates. Then he clears his throat and starts over. “Do you maybe wanna date? Not, like, really be in a relationship. But. Date. You know.”

“Date,” Derek repeats. “Like we’re in high school.”

“Yes,” he snaps his fingers. “That’s exactly what I mean. Like high school. That’s where I wanna start. Like we are in homeroom together. That’s a safe space for me, right now. I can’t be – I just can’t be –“ 

“You really don’t have to explain, it’s all right. Whatever works for you,” he’s smiling. He stares up at the ceiling and smiles, all teeth, and Stiles blushes. “I’ll take you to prom.” 

“I’d like that,” he says. “At my real prom, I went with a guy who tried to get me to have sex with him in the bathroom.”

“Yikes,” Derek whistles. “At mine, I went with this girl who got too drunk and puked on my rental suit. My mom went insane. She had to pay for the thing.” 

“Yikes,” Stiles repeats back to him. They should probably get up, and they should probably clean the come out of the carpet before it really sets in, but neither of them move. For the first time since they met each other, Stiles reaches down and grabs at Derek’s hand. He laces their fingers together, sure and tight, and Derek smiles at him.

**

Nashville lights up at night like Christmas morning – it was what he liked the absolute most about it. The neon signs for bars and music halls, the glimmering lights off the bridge shimmering on the Cumberland River. It reminded him of waking up and going downstairs in the morning to see his living room lit by Christmas lights from the tree, presents scattered across the floor underneath it. It’s so silly when he thinks about it now, but to him, Nashville was the embodiment of everything he spent his childhood and adolescence dreaming about. Music. Lights.

On the plane as they start to make their descent, Stiles gets a brief look at the river and its crossings, before he shuts the blind on his window. He grits his teeth and goes a bit stiff, staring dead ahead at the back of the seat in front of him. 

Most of the things that he has leftover from Matt are the kind that he cannot touch. Memories and traumas and scars inside of his head. Phantom hurts and phantom touches. The fear. The paranoia. The inability to fully commit to someone else. 

But Nashville is the thing he can touch. It’s a tangible nightmare. The water is real, the bridges are real, the street and the apartment that sits on it are real, the restaurants, bars, and even the lights. Those are real. He can’t make them go away by ignoring them or drowning them in liquor. 

Derek shifts next to him. It reminds Stiles that he’s there. He turns and looks at him – he’s got on dark jeans and a black t-shirt, so he could be anybody else on planet earth, really, but he’s not just anybody else on planet earth. He’s playing solitaire on his phone. Stiles watches his fingers move on his screen, watches him think about what moves to make, watches him win and then immediately start a new game. 

“You’re staring,” Derek says. 

“Watching you play cards is a lot more enjoyable than looking outside.” 

“You know,” he turns his phone off and places it face down on his knee, while overhead the fasten seatbelt signs come back on. They’re almost there. “…I have never been here before.” 

“It’s a really cool place,” he frowns. “It’s a real shame you’re coming with me, the head case who can’t bear to look out the window. Because it’s one of the greatest places on earth.” 

Derek looks away for a moment, as though he’s trying to decide what the best way to respond to that would be. When he looks back, he’s smiling. “I bet it’s a shithole.” 

Stiles’ lips quirk at the corners. 

“I bet it makes Jersey look like the Roman Empire. No good food, no good bars, and especially no good music. Just a scourge on American society as a whole. I don’t really care. I’d rather sit in the hotel all day.” 

“Yeah?” Stiles smiles, cocking his head to the side. He knows Derek is just being nice, but he appreciates the gesture for what it is. Derek doesn’t really care about Nashville. And if he does, he can come back and see it another time. “We’ll order Thai food and watch movies.” 

“Thai food,” Derek is surprised. “I didn’t know you liked Thai food.” 

“Well. The best Thai place in America is in Nashville. In spite of how much I despise this place and have detested the mere idea of returning here, I have, on occasion, fantasized about the food from this restaurant.” 

“Whoa. The craving for this food is stronger than your hatred of Nashville?” 

“Oh, fuck yeah. It’s gonna blow your mind.” 

“I’m starving,” Derek is always fucking starving, so this is not news, not in the least bit. Stiles has it on good authority that in a survival situation where food was scarce, Derek would flat out die at the prospect of having to ration or even just fucking skip breakfast. 

They land. Stiles had spent time looking at himself in the mirror back in New York, pointing at himself and repeating, over and over, you will not fuck this up. You will not have a mental collapse over being in Nashville. You will be normal. You will show Derek a good time even if it kills you to do so. You will survive this, god dammit. He had psyched himself up, done mental exercises, prepared himself, and did his best to not ever let the anxiety get to him. 

Ultimately, whether or not he has a full blown mental breakdown is out of his control. But he can avoid liquor and focus his full attention on Derek and putting on a decent finale for this FUCKING shitstorm of a tour, and maybe that will help him keep it together. 

They exit the plane. He’s in that weird tunnel that connects the airport to the plane, where it feels weird to walk, because they’re suspended up in the air a ways, and he panics. It’s not a full blown panic attack, and it isn’t like he’s shaking and crying, but he is definitely panicking. What if he can’t even leave the airport? What if he starts screaming and crying in front of all of these people and TMZ prints it and everyone films it? What if he can’t get out of bed tomorrow just like it used to be the last time he was here? What if he gets stuck? What if he can’t get on stage? What if he disappoints everyone again? What if Matt is here? What if?

He sucks in a deep breath and shoves his sunglasses onto his face and is moving to put his hood up onto his head, to hide, his only defense against the outside world, but then Derek is taking his hand. He laces the fingers together. Stiles grips onto it way harder than is necessary, like a lifeline, like his emotional support dog or something – and it grounds him. 

Derek is here. Derek wouldn’t let any of that happen. And if any of it did happen, Derek would be there to help him. Derek could pull Stiles out of any hole that he tried to dig himself into, even the deepest ones. Even the hole here, in this city, that’s as wide as the ocean and as deep as the Marianas Trench. 

Out in the actual airport, Stiles remembers that the last time he was here, he was alone. Well, with Boyd. He remembers that he was this sullen, sunken person who hid from any and all eyes, who was half drunk and snapped at the airline attendant who told him she was a fan. That person seems lightyears away, now. It’s hard to imagine being him. That was his lowest point. Crawling back to New York like a burned out husk of a person – a dead tree, left behind, in the wake of a nightmarish devastation. 

It’s crowded. Stiles feels claustrophobic even though the space is huge. Derek holds his hand hard and pulls him this way and that, so Stiles doesn’t wind up wandering off and making a scene somewhere, most likely. 

By the baggage claim, out of the airport proper, down where the rental car places are and the shuttles and the bus information, there are people waiting for him. They knew he was coming, and they’re all gaggled up, anticipating his illustrious return to his former home. Stiles wonders what would happen if he walked right up to them, took his sunglasses off, and said that he wishes he could be anyplace else on planet earth aside from in this city. 

When they see him coming, they don’t scream or cause a scene. They wave and sort of titter a bit, but no screaming. Stiles keeps his sunglasses on, but he tugs on Derek’s hand to go over in their direction. Derek is surprised. He blinks and looks at Stiles as if for confirmation – like he would’ve expected Stiles to want to get out of here immediately, to nose dive into the cab and then barrel into the hotel room to lock the door the draw the shades. This is true. But Stiles can’t just ignore them. They came to meet him. He can stand to be nice to them for five fucking minutes. 

As he approaches, they greet him in a bit of a cacophony. Boyd hangs back and does that thing where he sighs and rolls his eyes, because he hates the fans and always has – they irritate him. Stiles gets it. They can sort of be irritating, at times. But they’re always nice to him, if a bit excessively enthusiastic. 

He signs copies of The Standing Dead, again and again – and a poster of himself from the Rolling Stone photo shoot with his dead eyes and permanent frown and far away look which he can barely look at. They tell him it’s so good to see him he looks well it’s great he’s back in Nashville they can’t wait for the show tomorrow night is he excited does he ever miss it here, and Stiles nods and smiles and says as little as he can possibly can, while Derek stands there and observes. One girl thrusts a bouquet of roses in his direction, and Stiles delicately takes them from her with a bemused smile. 

“I got these for you,” she says, in this panicked tone like she’s terrified he’s going to hate them or throw them to the ground or stomp on them. “Coming back must be hard for you.”

Sometimes, Stiles doesn’t have to say anything. They don’t know him, he’s not their friend, he’s not their brother, he’s nothing like what they think of him as – but sometimes, they’re perceptive. It _is_ hard for him to come back. She went out and got these just for him, to make him feel better.

Stiles accepts them with a nod of his head. “I love them. They’re great. Thank you.” 

Her eyes flick to Derek Hale, standing right next to him. She says, “hi.” She sort of looks at him like she cannot believe he exists or that he’s here, even more so than Stiles, whose t-shirt she’s wearing. Every time Stiles has ever met fans with any of his boyfriends present, they’ve all regarded them much the same. Sort of like they don’t know what to do about them. Should they say hi or ignore them? Isn’t this just the jackass who’s inspiring the next record? Shouldn’t we hate him? 

Derek says, “hi. I like your shirt.” 

She looks down at herself as if forgetting what she had on - it’s a tour shirt, Stiles’ silhouette on it, his name in big red letters. She goes red. Beet red. She does not know what to do with this statement; Derek is joking around, and she is paralyzed by him. 

Stiles laughs and hands Derek the flowers to hold, which he does without question, so their wrapping crinkles in his hands. He signs some more and takes a handful of pictures, but then he has to go and he says as much to their dismay. They bid him goodbye and good luck, waving at him and then going back to giggling the second his back is turned. 

As they’re walking away, Stiles takes his flowers back and sniffs them, cradling them against his chest. He really does like them. It was thoughtful. 

Outside, it’s cold, and dark. Night time, the lights all bright from cars and buildings. Stiles keeps his head low and he vows to look at as little as possible, because he doesn’t know what he’s going to see that’s going to jog a memory, always a bad one, and send him spiraling. 

In the car, Derek sits with him in the back, in the middle, so he’s pressed right up against Stiles’ side. “Your fans are insane,” he says. 

Stiles keeps his eyes on the back of the front seat, not out the window. He says, “they’re not so bad.” 

“They all looked at me like they either hated me or didn’t know what to do about me.” 

A smile spreads across his face before he can help it. “That’s precisely how they all feel, yes.” 

“Don’t they know I’m the guy from Dead By Sunrise?” He points to his chest with his thumbs, as the car starts moving, as they’re pulling away into the city. “I’m a big deal. They looked at me like I was chopped liver.”

“You’re the dick who’s going to make me cry and inspire their next favorite song,” he says with a lift of his eyebrow. 

Derek says, “no I’m not,” so immediately, it’s automatic. Like, _of course I’m not going to make you fucking cry, I’d never do that, over my dead body._

“That’s how they see you. You know, Matt was my longest relationship. Most of the time, I’d date a guy for 6 months before he wound up being a dick. They’re sorta just waiting for you to not be around anymore.” 

Derek blinks at him, and he’s got this look on his face, like he thinks that’s bizarre. That people just sit around and wait for Stiles’ relationships to crash and burn, because of course, they all will. It’s like when Lydia had told Derek that she didn’t need to actually meet him. Because he would just be gone in a few weeks, anyway. 

Then he wasn’t. And he still is here, even now, even in this place. 

“You know what I think would be hilarious?” He leans his head back against the seat and turns to Derek with a big, shit eating grin on his face. “If you came to the meet and greets.” 

Derek snorts. “That _would_ be hilarious.” 

“Like, they walk in, and you’re there. The zombie killer. The pictures would be so god damn funny.” 

Derek laughs. Stiles expects him to say _oh, that’s funny, but I wouldn’t actually do that_ – but instead, he shrugs. “Okay. Sounds fun.” 

God. If Stiles had asked Matt to come and spend an hour talking to fans, he’d have laughed right in Stiles’ face and then viciously refused. Matt hated the fans. Stiles always wondered if he hated the way they regarded him or left comments on his Instagram about how they hate him and wish him dead, or if he hated that they worshipped the ground that Stiles walked on. If he hated that someone out there actually did really love Stiles, no matter how misguided it may have been.

Derek just shrugs and goes along with everything. It is once again impossible to imagine him with a serious anger issue. The guy exudes give-a-fuck energy. 

At the hotel, he gets out and is greeted with cameras flashing and people yelling at him. Derek takes his hand again and walks with him, quickly, over the sound of people asking him what it’s like to be back in Nashville, how’s it feel, how is he, on and on and on. They get to the elevator, and then it’s just the two of them and Boyd tucked away inside, so Stiles finally gets to let his guard down. 

He pulls his sunglasses off and he frowns and runs his hands through his hair. How’s it feel to be back in Nashville? How does it feel? The question makes him want to fucking scream. 

He glances, out of the corner of his eye, at the security camera in the corner of this fucking box. He thinks about how Derek still has no clue, none whatsoever, that there’s a video, from an elevator just like this one. It doesn’t matter at the same time that it does. It doesn’t feel good to lie to someone who’s been nothing but kind to him, but he has no choice. 

The room is nice. It’s a great big suite with incredible views that overlook the entire city, the glistening sparkling neon sea of night life laid out before them to marvel at. But Stiles goes right over and draws the curtains up tight, no light seeping inside, so he can pretend he’s still in the Tribeca place with Derek, with the piano, and the bedroom with the mismatched closet door. It’s preferable to here. Anywhere is. He gets his flowers set up in a vase he digs out of the cabinets.

He sits on the couch and then puts his hands in his lap. He doesn’t know what to do with himself. There’s this strange part of him that thinks that sitting still and being quiet is likely his best bet – then he remembers where he got that from, and it makes him angry. 

Derek squats down in front of him and gives him a small smile. He says, “you doing okay?” 

Stiles does not know how to answer that question. What’s ‘okay?’ He doesn’t know what it means to even be okay, at this point. “No,” he says honestly, throat tightening up. “I just ….” 

“You don’t have to explain,” Derek says, for what feels like the ten thousandth time since Stiles met him. It’s nice in a way, to act however he wants, however his mind and body demand him to act, and to not have to offer up any explanations. But on the other side of the coin, he thinks that Derek is trapped here with him, and that he deserves to know why this trip feels more like a tomb than it does some romantic getaway they’re going on. 

Stiles cries. He buries his face in his hands and bursts into immediate tears, just thinking about having to say out loud everything that has been going through his head since the second he got on that plane back at JFK. Big, big crying, overwhelmed crying, can’t even speak or barely even breathe crying. 

The city outside asks him if he remembers what a bad idea it is for him to cry. That crying is weak and crying is going to get him in trouble, that someone is going to come over and hurt him for acting this way. 

No one does. Derek moves closer and pulls Stiles’ hands away from his face, pulls him down into a big hug. Hugging Derek feels like hugging a great big cuddly stuffed animal, like from when he was a kid. He’s warm and strong, and he smells like comfort and safe, and Stiles cries harder. 

This is all he ever really wanted from anyone. A god damn hug that makes him feel safe. Like the city outside doesn’t exist. No cameras. No one watching him. 

A throat clears from somewhere to their left. Stiles stays pressed deep into Derek’s body, refuses to move even as Derek shifts and turns his head. “You guys want me to order the food?” It’s Boyd. He’s hungry, apparently. 

Derek rubs a circle on Stiles’ back. “You hungry?” 

“No,” Stiles cries into Derek’s neck, holding him tighter. 

“He should really eat something,” Boyd insists, and Derek nods his head in agreement. 

“It’s the best Thai food in America, remember? You’ve fantasized about it?”

Stiles sucks in a deep breath and closes his eyes. Oh, yes. Back when food was enjoyable, he does remember how obsessed he was with that Thai place. He’s tried everything on the menu, multiple times. The owner has got a Polaroid picture of himself with Stiles framed on the wall aside a menu with Stiles’ signature on it. 

And, Matt hated Thai food. They never went there together. It is a wholesome, safe memory of Nashville that doesn’t make him want to cry or scream or projective vomit. 

“I want spring rolls,” he says. “And noodles. I don’t care what kind. Any kind.” 

“Okay,” Derek agrees. He somehow manages to unfurl himself from Stiles’ vicious death grip on him, pulls away enough so that they can look one another in the face. Derek smiles at him. This thin, encouraging smile. “It’s okay, you know? You can cry all you want.” 

It’s insane Derek even has to say that to him, but he really really does. Stiles needed the reassurance. “I’m sorry I’m not much fun.” 

Derek shakes his head. “I didn’t come here to have fun. I came to see it through.” 

In some cosmic sense, Stiles coming back to Nashville at all is seeing it through. When he packed his bags and sold his apartment and left, he was just running away. Nothing was solved. Nothing was finished. He had abandoned any hope of closure long ago – but now, here he is again. Seeing it through. He knew the chapter on Nashville wasn’t closed, has known it this entire time, has known he was still trapped in that bedroom in that apartment downtown. 

And he’s known the chapter on Matt wasn’t closed, either. He left it open by running away from him, instead of handling it. It’s getting close to the time where Stiles is going to have to finish it. He knows. 

He just isn’t sure if he can actually do it.

**

@nashvillinski : I MET STILES  
@nashvillinski : HE JUST WALKED RIGHT UP AND SAID HELLO IT WAS ANAKSKSKS  
@nashvillinski : Derek Hale was with him they were holding hands they are 138383% together  
@nashvillinski : some girl gave him flowers and Derek held them for him 🥺🥺  
@nashvillinski : Derek didn’t say much, mostly he just stood there lmfao. Stiles was soooo nice he signed everything and smiled at me 😭😭😭  
@nashvillinski : he and Derek look cute together in person like I can’t explain it maybe he’s not so bad  
@nashvillinski : he was carrying Stiles’ pillow too maybe we have to stan???

**

Stiles wakes up. He hadn’t dreamed last night which is a miracle in and of itself, but he knows it’s only because he took those crazy sleeping pills Lydia gets for him that knock him out like he literally dies for 9 straight hours. He knew if he didn’t, he’d be up all night in a fit of anxiety, panicking, and not just about the show. But about Nashville in general.

It’s pathetic. But he’s completely resigned to this place dragging him under. Or, almost. 

The first thing he sees when he opens his eyes is the little crack of the outside world between the two curtains on the wide window in his bedroom. It’s just a sliver. But he sees grey skies and dead trees and the city, and it reminds him of last time. It’s just like last time. And just like last time, he gets this feeling, like there’s a big monster in the bed with tentacles that holds him down and won’t let him leave, like he’s trapped here, like he couldn’t get up even if he wanted to. 

Derek is snoring next to him, which, bizarrely, brings him back to reality. He’s almost never awake before Derek – because Derek typically arises early to go run around somewhere or do any number of other weird workouts (Stiles honestly has no idea). Today, he’s dead asleep still. Stiles pushes the covers off and forces himself up out of the bed. 

He sits on the edge for a moment, just staring at the carpet. Nashville is just a city. The show is the same, the same as it’s always been, even if it’s here. It’s good for him to be here. Facing the monster. He doesn’t know if he genuinely believes any of this, but it feels good to think it all the same. 

He gets up and brushes his teeth. He almost gets in the shower, but then he thinks he should wait for Derek to get up so they can shower together. In the living room of his suite, he hovers. He can hear that Boyd is up and digging around in his suitcase in the adjoining room, can hear the distant sounds of the busy city street down below. 

With a huff, he goes to the window and pushes the curtains open. He stands there and stares out at the sun rising over this city he’s been so afraid of for so long, and in this moment, he feels silly. He can see the river from here, and the famous bridge and all its lights, and the sunrise is all orange and red. It looks like a scene from a postcard – not some nightmare memory of his. He stands and looks for a long time. He tries to file this memory away, as if to overwrite some other memory, some shitty one, like taping over an old school recital from the bottom of a bin in the basement of his childhood house. 

He’s so absorbed in it he doesn’t hear Boyd come in the room, until Boyd is putting his hand on his shoulder, startling him. “Hey,” he starts, “I’ve gotta go talk to Erica on the third floor. Are you okay if I…?” 

Stiles thinks about how typically he’d go into panic mode, at the idea of being without his security for even ten minutes. But now, he waves his hand and nods. “Derek’s here. Go ahead.” 

“Are you sure? Because –“ 

“It’s fine. Uh, is she pissed or something?” 

“She usually is,” he says with a wry smile, “I’ll be back in an hour. Don’t go wandering off.” 

Stiles rolls his eyes. Back in the day, he was indeed known to wander away. Or, more accurately, he would dip his security to do any number of stupid things. As a matter of fact, he once fled from Boyd so he would be free and alone to go drink at a bar with Josh Perry and then had sex with him in the bathroom. Which was funny, but Boyd went ballistic on him. 

That sort of thing hasn’t been a problem in years. Stiles really hasn’t been the unruly, crafty person he used to be in so long. 

Boyd leaves with a click of the hotel door, and Stiles takes one last long look at the rising sun and the city, before he digs out the room service menu. He orders enough food for ten people, because Derek eats like ten people, and then he busies himself with picking up the mess from last night. 

The takeout containers are all still sitting on the coffee table in front of the television, where they had watched Scooby Doo because it was the only half decent thing on. He sweeps them all into the trash and then ties it up and sets it to the side to make cleanup easier on housekeeping. 

The food comes quick. Likely because everyone on staff knows who’s staying in this room, and they all scattered like mice the second the order came in, to get it done as fast as possible. This only becomes even more apparent when he pulls open the door and the girl who’s delivering the food cart nearly knocks over the orange juice pitcher at the sheer sight of him. 

He beckons her inside with all the food and as she comes in, she looks around with big eyes, as though she’s looking for something to go report back to the kitchen with. Something juicy, like Stiles is shacked up in here with five different guys, or there are empty liquor bottles, or just something. But there’s nothing. They had eaten and gone right to bed last night; no crazy party, no wild orgies, nothing of the sort. 

“Give me a second, I’ll grab you a tip,” he tells her, turning on his heel to find his wallet. She stands there stuck frozen on the spot, and still has not spoken a single word. Stiles absently wonders if maybe she rallied for the opportunity to be the one to take the food up, because she’s a fan, and now that she’s actually here in Stiles’ presence she can’t even come up with anything to say to him. 

It gets worse for her when Derek groggily emerges from the bedroom, wearing nothing but his underwear, hair mussed, rubbing at his eyes like he literally just woke up not ten seconds ago. 

She says, “oh my god,” in this quiet, panicked whisper. 

“I smelled the food,” he says. Of course he did. He’s a great big golden retriever masquerading as a human being. 

Stiles can’t stop himself – he grins from ear to ear, shaking his head. As he hands the hotel girl a wad of crumpled 20’s, he flicks his head in Derek’s direction, because he can’t help messing with her. “Though, that’s enough of a tip in and of itself, huh?” 

She goes so red she may as well explode. Then, she accepts the money and clears her throat, plucking up the courage to finally speak to him. “Thank you,” she says, shaky. Then, she turns and leaves, stiff, like she’s just been through hell and back. 

As soon as she’s gone, Derek says, “I didn’t expect you to be up before me. You fucking went catatonic after you took those pills.”

“Oh, it’s the good shit,” he starts grabbing food off the tray and setting it out on the coffee table, “it’s like dying but, like, softly. If you take too many I think you go into a coma.” 

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Derek sits down in front of the food, still undressed, and grabs a handful of bacon. He crunches on it by the mouthful, watching Stiles try to pick between pancakes or the omelet. “No nightmares last night?” 

Stiles shakes his head. 

Derek eats some more, quiet. He seems to be thinking pretty hard about something, staring down at the food and eating robotically. He’s gotta be wondering what the right thing to say or do would be. He’s wondering if he should be addressing the elephant in the room, or ignoring it, or maybe dressing it up so it’s not so bad. 

Having to take care of someone else’s feelings, all the fucking time, must be exhausting. Stiles can’t imagine what he would be saying or doing if he were in Derek’s position, so he sits up and says, “you know, you don’t have to act like I’m fine China, or something.” 

Derek is swallowing a gigantic triangle of pancake. He shakes his head, quickly forcing the food down his gullet so he can hurry up and respond to that. “I’m not…that’s not what I’m doing.” 

“Kind of,” Stiles smiles at him, thin. “I mean, it’s cool. I’m just saying, you know. I’m good.” 

“You’re good,” he repeats, like this is a ridiculous thing to say. “You cried your eyes out for an entire hour last night. You only stopped crying because I put noodles in front of you.” 

Stiles waves his hand, like that’s nothing. It’s certainly not the record, that’s for sure. 

“I guess I just don’t want to say or do the wrong thing,” he admits this a bit cautiously, like he thinks Stiles will be offended. “I want to be helpful. Not just….some asshole who eats all the room service.” 

“You know what’s helpful? Distractions,” he takes a sip of orange juice, watching Derek’s reaction. He seems a bit clueless, because he generally is. Stiles explains further. “I’m talking about having sex and all that.” 

“All that?” 

“Yes,” he averts his eyes to his omelet, cutting a chunk off with his fork just to play with it a bit, “you know. Derek stuff.” 

“Derek stuff?” 

“I mean, just how you normally are.” 

“How I normally am?” 

“Do you need a translator?” Stiles asks him with a huff, so Derek blinks at him – he’s lost, is still lost, even though Stiles feels he’s being clear. “Like, how you would act if you didn’t know I was… if you didn’t know about all that stuff.” 

Derek puts his fork down and wipes at his mouth with his napkin. So, Stiles knows he’s about to say something really serious. “You think I’m treating you like a wounded animal.” 

“You are.” 

“Well, first off, you are one. Second off, this kind of stuff doesn’t come with a guide book. I have never in my life dated someone who has been through what you have. I’m just fucking treading water.” 

“I want to be normal,” he insists. “I want to – I want. I want to forget. Like, hit the reset. So I can have a normal healthy relationship and you don’t have to walk on eggshells.” 

Derek puts his hand on Stiles’ back, and he smiles. It’s kind of a sad smile. “That is not the situation that we are in, baby.” 

It isn’t. Derek doesn’t lie, and he doesn’t sugar coat the truth, because doing so is always ultimately worse in the long run. Stiles needs to face these things head on, instead of pretending they do not exist, burying them, digging as deep as he can. 

They will come back up. In worse ways. In ways so bad Stiles can’t even imagine them. He’s right. They can’t pretend this is all normal. It isn’t. 

Stiles is still just playing with his food, instead of actually eating it. Christ, he thinks. Jesus Christ. There’s not much to say. “Well,” he starts. 

“You have this idea in your head that behaving in any way that suggests you’ve been through what you’ve been through would be the worst possible thing. I don’t mind,” he shrugs. “You could lock us both in here with the lights off just to cry some more, and I wouldn’t mind. You don’t have to pretend.” 

He takes a bite, just for something to do, to give him an excuse to not immediately say something. When he swallows, he keeps his eyes down. “Then I’m not the boy from the posters,” he confesses, and Derek sighs, because he immediately knows what Stiles means. 

Derek had told him, in Vancouver, at the dinner table, that Stiles was always the unattainable fantasy he had. He thought Stiles was this attractive, talented, smart, funny, worldly person who was good in bed because he’s slept with so many men, who would know the best restaurants and would go on vacations to Greece and Ibiza and write songs and just be…perfect. In the glossy pages of a magazine hanging on a bedroom wall, Stiles can look pretty perfect. 

But he’s not. He’s this fuck up with problems that drinks too much and has complete breakdowns over going to certain cities. 

“I don’t want the boy from the posters,” Derek tells him, tone even and direct. “I want you. You are better than any idealized bullshit.” 

“You’re being nice,” Stiles accuses, but Derek shakes his head. 

“I’m here, aren’t I?” 

Yes, he is. He’s here. He had held Stiles as he cried, and he got into bed and let Stiles cling to him like a stuffed animal, like a comfort object, because that’s what Derek is to Stiles, anymore. A security blanket. He had done all of these things without complaint. Nobody does shit like that just to be fucking nice. 

But Stiles has never had a boyfriend like Derek Hale before. This is unchartered territory. This is unfamiliar terrain. And it isn’t just because this is his first boyfriend after the worst three years of his entire life, his first boyfriend after his life completely changed. 

It’s because Derek Hale isn’t like anyone else Stiles has ever met. He’s singular. He’s not just another guy. 

“Well,” Stiles says again, shrugging. He isn’t sure what else there is to say. “Can we still have sex in the shower?” 

“Obviously, yes.” Derek smirks at him. “That’s a healthy distraction.” 

“Your huge dick.” 

“Apparently, not as big as Matt Harding’s.” 

Stiles is surprised that anything involving Matt’s name or even just a reminder of him could possibly make him laugh. But this does.

“Still jealous, are we?” 

Derek shrugs. He’s still undressed, sat on the couch, eating breakfast, casual as all get out. This exact thing is the wet dream of thousands upon thousands of people, and yet, it’s happening in real time to Stiles Stilinski, of all fucking people. There have been a lot of pinch-me moments since Stiles met Derek, and this is just another to add to the list. Derek is such a fucking man. 

And this moment is just another song to write, in all honesty.

**

It’s only a week and a half until Thanksgiving, and that coinciding with the final show of the tour makes the crew all chummy and nostalgic. Of course they throw together a Friendsgiving event the afternoon before the show, that Stiles only finds out about a mere couple of hours before it’s meant to happen. Apparently, most of the crew figured he’d be too drunk or too useless to attend. Which is fair, at the same time it makes Stiles feel like absolute shit.

While he may be useless, he’s not too drunk to go eat with the people who have been working their asses off to keep this tour going, even when Stiles was actively trying to sabotage it, at times. And truth be told, he really wants to go with Derek, so everyone he works with can actually meet him. There have been hundreds of articles, thousands of pictures, likely millions of tweets and general public opinions – all about Stiles and Derek – but most of these people have not even seen him in person, let alone actually met him. Stiles has sort of been hoarding him to himself. 

As such, it’s not a surprise that the sight of him walking in alongside Stiles draws more than a few double takes and a whole bunch of whispering. Stiles does his best to ignore it, and Derek seems completely oblivious. There’s a buffet table full of food that’s absorbing all of his attention, after all. 

Derek is not shy about taking food. He fills a paper plate to the point of it nearly groaning in protest, where it’s almost ripping clean in half as he holds it in his hands. 

“I shudder to think of the amount of time you’re going to have to spend in the gym after this trip,” Stiles tells him as they sit at an empty table, a bit away from everyone else. “You’ve done nothing but eat since we left.” 

Derek sops cranberry sauce all over a turkey slice, so it’s like looking at a bloody carcass. “Don’t worry about it,” he says with a lift of his eyebrow. Which means he’s going to have to practically live at the gym the second he gets back from Nashville. He’s got a movie to promote coming up right after the holidays, after all – it wouldn’t do if he got even an iota less hot, over his break. “I don’t mean to bug you, but I need clarification on how serious you were about coming to my mother’s house for Christmas. I need to let her know at Thanksgiving if you’ll be coming. She would never forgive me if I didn’t give her time to prepare.” 

“Prepare?” 

“Oh, it’s a big deal,” he laughs, as though it’s funny. “If she finds out company is coming, she’ll spend three straight weeks scrubbing the walls and adjusting the furniture. Especially because you’re…” he gestures around the room with his fork, to the crew who builds his stage he comes up with, the band who plays the music he writes. As if to say, _you know, because you’re famous._

“Um,” Stiles starts, poking at his mashed potatoes. Really, he should say he isn’t going, because he’s not exactly the type of person people bring home to their mothers. The trouble is, he wants to fucking go. Even knowing his sisters and his mother and his aunts are going to harangue Stiles to within an inch of his life. He just… wants to. “You can tell her to start scrubbing. I’ll be there.” 

Derek has got a mouthful of food, but he smiles, pleased. Stiles would have expected everything in their relationship to change the second they agreed to officially be together; but really, it’s been the exact fucking same. Which really only speaks to the fact that they never really were anything but together, even when they were denying it. 

Scott sets his plate down at their table and immediately sticks his hand out to Derek, for him to shake. “I’m Scott,” he says. 

Derek shakes his hand. “I remember. You told me you hated me at the album release party.” 

Like this is irrelevant, Scott waves his hand, water under the bridge, not even worth mentioning. “I hate everyone Stiles dates. It’s my job. Men are pigs. Plus, after what happened last time, I don’t really pull any punches.” 

Stiles looks at his food and he feels shitty, because Scott has no idea what really happened last time. He thinks that Matt was shit, yes, and controlling, yes, and manipulative, yes, but he does not know the full extent of it. Stiles still has it locked away, in the same safe Lydia keeps the incriminating flash drive. 

Erica never sits and eats with them. She has hardly looked in Stiles’ direction in weeks, as a matter of fact – likely too wrapped up in her new relationship with Boyd to really give much of an effort to give a fuck about what’s going on with Stiles any longer – but now here she is, setting her plate down right next to Scott, and sitting down. She doesn’t say anything, just gives Stiles a bit of an odd look, and then starts eating. 

“Uh, this is my bass player,” he says to Derek with a nudge in his side. “Also, Boyd’s girlfriend.” 

Erica snorts. “I’m surprised you even knew that,” she snaps at him. Stiles blinks. This is exactly what he expects from her lately, anyway, so he doesn’t have much of a reaction. What does surprise him is the way that she seems to immediately regret having said that. She clears her throat and shakes her head, reaching for her water glass to take a great big sip, like she’s taking a moment to compose herself. When she’s done, she sets her glass down and says, “I mean, you haven’t said anything about it.” 

Right here, in front of Derek and Scott and who knows whoever else is listening, is not really the best time for any kind of heart to heart with Erica. But Scott is simple in the head and Derek is preoccupied with seeing how much stuffing he can fit in his stomach, so he decides, fuck it. “It’s not as though you and I really talk.” 

Her face pinches together. She wants to get mad and yell at him and say shitty things to him – Stiles can see it all over her face. But, for whatever reason, she stamps down this desire. She says, matching Stiles’ energy “it’s not as though you’ve made any effort to talk to me.” 

There are a lot of different ways to take that statement. Erica has been known to talk in code before, and she is particularly partial to passive aggression, and this is just such an occasion. “What is that supposed to mean?” 

Derek is listening. He’s eating, bite by bite, but he is looking between Erica and Stiles, again and again, like he’s watching Wimbledon. 

“It means,” she says, through grit teeth, “I don’t know a whole bunch about your life anymore. Not like I used to.” 

“What’s there to know?” 

She stares at him. And it’s like her eyes are seeing clean through to his very fucking center. “Apparently, quite a bit.” 

Scott says, “you’re being a dick,” to her, but neither of them acknowledge that. They stare at one another. Something occurs to Stiles in this moment, and it comes organically, so Stiles is almost certain that it’s the truth, even if he has no evidence of it. It’s why Erica is holding back from getting in his face and screaming at him or being shitty, which she never had any problems with on a normal day. It’s why she’s sitting here at all, in spite of the fact that she’s barely cared to speak to him for months. It’s why she’s looking at him like that. 

Stiles stands. He says, “you don’t know what you’re talking about,” and picks up his plate. He walks the ten steps to the trash can and dumps his half eaten food into it. Behind him, he hears the distinct sound of a chair being pushed out. 

“Excuse me,” Derek says, and then there’s footsteps following behind Stiles, because wherever Stiles goes, Derek has to follow. Stiles barely notices. He has to get out of this room, and he has to go and find Boyd, right fucking now. 

He pushes out the double doors and finds himself face to face with a long hallway, the bowels of the venue, and then Derek is right behind him. “What was all that?” He asks, but Stiles can hear Boyd’s voice down the hall to the right, so he follows it without a word. He’s got tunnel vision. His heart rate spiked. All he can think about is the way that Erica had fucking looked at him, back there. 

Like she felt fucking sorry for him. 

He rounds the corner, and Boyd is there. He’s got his arms crossed, and he’s talking to Frank, nodding his head, looking very serious. The two of them nearly always look serious, so this is nothing out of the ordinary – Stiles charges forward with Derek hot on his heels and he says, “I need to talk to you alone,” looking right at Boyd. 

Boyd blinks. He says, “we’re kind of in the middle of –“ 

“I don’t give a fuck,” he barks, and Boyd blinks again. Derek is hovering to the side with no expression on his face except maybe moderate confusion, while Frank just fucking stands there like a tree. “Did you tell Erica?” 

There’s a pause. Frank leans back against the wall, like he’s settling in instead of making any moves to walk away. After all, he’s not totally clueless on this particular subject. He’s been given the strict instructions to keep Matt Harding away from Stiles at all costs. And he heard some of the fights. It’s not a mystery to him. 

Boyd’s jaw works. “Tell her what?” 

This evasion is really all the answer that Stiles needs. Yes. Boyd told Erica. He told her, and now she knows, and then the game of fucking telephone is going to start, where everyone is going to hear some twisted account of what really happened, and they’re all going to look at him the same fucking way that Erica just had. 

Pity. Stiles can’t stand the fucking thought of being pitied. 

He raises his hand like he’s going to slap the living daylights out of him, says, “you son of a bitch –“ and jerks forward to do just that. Frank catches his wrist and Derek moves at the same time, reaching his hands out towards Stiles and then hovering them in the air, waiting for Stiles to try and strike again. 

“What the hell am I supposed to do?” Boyd is mad, moving forward and furrowing his brow. Frank’s got Stiles held back, and he’s much stronger and bigger, so as badly as Stiles wants to hit Boyd, he can’t. “Lie to her?”

“That’s my life you’re fucking with, that’s my god damn life,” he shouts, livid, so fucking angry he’s shaking. “Who else have you told? My dad, now Erica, who else?” 

“I’m not just telling everyone and anyone –“ 

“Don’t you understand the gravity of what happened to me?” He elbows Frank in the side to try and break free, but it’s no use – he holds him, steadfast, and isn’t letting go for anything. “What would happen to me if everyone found out? You don’t care!” 

Boyd pinches the bridge of his nose and lets out this deeply exhausted sigh. “She knew. She didn’t know, but she knew. She asked me, god dammit, she asked me!” 

“I want you gone,” he snaps. “I will get you fucking fired, I’ll sue you for breach of fucking contract –“ 

“No you won’t,” he rolls his eyes. “You’re being fucking hysterical!” 

“I can’t do it, I’ve told you, again and again, I can’t do it, I can’t fucking do it,” Frank lets him go. Stiles staggers forward and then presses his hands to his eyes, sucking in a great big breath. “Why would you fucking do that to me?” 

“Believe it or not, it wasn’t some plot to ruin your life, Stiles. I just - she’s your fucking friend,” he gestures, and Stiles just shakes his head. He feels as though he doesn’t have any god damn friends anymore. “She should know.” 

Derek puts his hand on Stiles’ shoulder. “Maybe let’s go cool off,” he suggests, tone gentle, his spooked-animal voice. Stiles shakes his head. He doesn’t want to cool off. 

“I have begged you, and begged you, to not tell anybody, to not –“ 

“You are so fucked up, you cannot think straight,” Boyd hisses at him. “You need psychiatric fucking help, you’re so fucked up in the head.” 

“Say something like that to him again, and we’re going to have a problem,” Derek says – he puts his arm in front of Stiles and pulls him back, away, as if to shield him from Boyd’s words. “How is that fucking helpful?” 

“I’m tired of protecting that piece of shit just because Stiles won’t say anything,” he says back, squaring his shoulders. “If you won’t, I will. I know where the video is.” 

Stiles shakes with anger, gritting his teeth, holding onto Derek’s arm with both hands just to keep him from trying to hit Boyd again. “You wouldn’t.” 

“What video?” Derek asks. 

“Stiles,” he leans forward, claps his hands once, like he’s waking Stiles up from a trance. “You are destroying yourself. Hate me all you want. I give a shit about you even if you resent me for it.” 

“You have no right to tell anyone what happened to me,” he hisses, even as Boyd turns and storms off down the hallway, likely to go punch a pillow or find something to work his frustration out on. “You have no right!” 

Boyd vanishes around the corner, gone, leaving Frank and Derek and Stiles staring after him. For his part, Frank just blinks impassively, then looks right into Stiles’ face. “He has a point,” he says, but Stiles scowls at him and tugs on Derek’s arm, to walk away and leave. 

Derek follows. He’s quiet as they walk, like he’s thinking, going over that entire scene over and over in his head. Stiles knows that he was acting crazy, but it’s par for the fucking course for him these days. He knows that one second he was having a good day with Derek and the next second he was having a fit, panicked, screaming at Boyd in the hallways and saying horrible things to him. 

He has a right to be angry. What happened to him is nobody’s business to tell anyone else, no matter how good their intentions are. But he also knows that these are his own problems, that he’s taking out on those around him. It isn’t always fair. 

He stops and presses his back against the wall of the empty hallway, just breathing, in and out, willing himself to calm down. Derek stops right next to him, leaning on his side against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest and lowering his neck to stare at the ground. He doesn’t say anything, and neither does Stiles. Not for a long time. 

Stiles wonders if this is going to be his life. If he’s going to keep grasping at straws, trying to have some semblance of a normal life, trying to become someone who’s not a complete fucking sack of garbage, and failing every single time. If he’s always going to have the devil on his back, if he’s always going to be carrying this dead fucking horse around, the rotting corpse of his trauma, seeping into his relationships, his life, his career, until it finally destroys all of it. 

Until Stiles faces what happened to him. Until Matt is forced to accept the consequences for it. Until Stiles tells the truth and stops it from happening to anyone else. He knows he is doomed to repeat the cycle, again and again. This realization is one that has been coming for a long time, but it is crippling, nonetheless. It’s like he’s paralyzed, and he won’t be allowed to move, not until he does the right thing. But the right thing….is poison, in his mind. Poison. 

Derek clears his throat. He lifts his head and he says, “what video?” 

Stiles palms his face. He had forgotten, that that had come up. 

“In the car leaving the bar in Boston, Boyd said – he said there was proof, or something. And just now, he mentioned a video.” 

The truth is owed to Derek probably most of all, because he has been so fucking patient and he’s been the only god damn person Stiles can actually rely on, but Stiles….can’t. He’s shitty. He can’t. “Don’t make me,” he shakes his head, closing his eyes. “I’ve gotta go out there and do this god damn show, please, not now, don’t make me talk about it.” 

Derek wants to know, and he wants to know terribly, but he says, “all right,” in a quiet voice. He gives Stiles space. He never pushes. He would be happy to stand in this hallway for the rest of the night, until Stiles was ready to move, asking no questions. 

Stiles is overwhelmed with gratitude for him. He reaches out and pulls Derek in for a hug, the longest hug, the hardest hug. He squeezes as hard as he can and closes his eyes and holds onto him for dear life, and Derek hugs him back, no questions asked. 

“I can’t do it,” he says, over Derek’s shoulder. “I can’t play the show. I thought I was okay but then all that – and Erica – and the fans – I can’t –“ 

Derek sighs. Stiles feels the movement against his own body. “You have to.” 

Yes. Oh, yes, he does. He has never had less of a choice about something in all of his life. 

“You are the one who insists that music is your emotional outlet,” he pulls out of the hug so he can take Stiles by his shoulders, hold him, look right into his eyes. “Think of it that way.” 

More than half of the songs he’s going to be playing have something to do with this city. It’s not always obvious, in the way he had written the lyrics, but this place is the theme. The blue bedroom. The broken glass. The lights on the water at night. He’s going to get up on stage in the city where his nightmares live and play those god damn songs. 

It’s his worst fears realized. And, at the same time, it’s almost like he’s coming full circle. He tries to think of it that way. He knows his time is running up. His days of holding onto this are fucking numbered. He knows. This show is the first nail in the coffin – it’s the catalyst for the unearthing of everything he has been burying, to just fucking finish it. 

The temptation to hide, to not get up there, to not set these things in motion, is almost too strong to ignore. But he tries his damnedest anyway. When it comes time for him to get up on stage, he’s got Derek there with him. Standing in the wings, listening to the crowd sing along to Free At Last, watching Scott and Erica and the rest of the band get set up in position. 

The stage hand whose name he never learned appears with his guitar, and hands it off to him with a nod of her head. “Last show, huh?” 

“Last show,” he agrees. Derek watches as Stiles slings his guitar on. 

As he starts to head off toward the platform, Derek grabs him by his wrist and says, “I’m going to be right here, all night long.” 

Stiles swallows the lump in his throat. He wishes he were drunk, right now, but he’s not supposed to be doing that anymore. “Okay,” he says. 

“Right here,” Derek repeats. 

Stiles turns and goes to stand on the x, where he’s supposed to stand, and he grips his guitar. The lights go out and the crowd loses their fucking minds, and Stiles turns and meets Derek’s eyes again. He wishes he could bring Derek onto the platform and take him on stage and have Derek hold his hand throughout the entire show, but he knows that this is something he has to do on his own. 

He takes in a deep breath. The platform jerks, and then he’s moving up, up, but he keeps his eyes on Derek for as long as he can, and Derek watches him go. 

Up on stage, he’s familiar with the venue. It used to be one of his favorite arenas to play, back when he was somebody else. He walks up to the microphone and stares at his hands, the fretboard, the strings, and he closes his eyes for a second. 

This is the thing he has been dreading, for so long. To be here, facing it, it’s like he could fucking vomit. Instead, he plays. He does the fucking songs. The smoke billows out at him and he stands in it, and he wonders if anyone out there understands that he’s the one who’s burning, has been burning this entire time, has been fucking screaming at the top of his lungs, trapped in the flames, while everyone watches and enjoys it. 

He does the guitar switch for Nashville. These are fans who have studied the set lists and have it memorized and they know what it means when he gets his acoustic guitar, they know that Nashville is next – and this is their city. Even before he has the acoustic guitar fully in his hands, they’re losing their fucking minds. The screaming is deafening, all encompassing, so loud he winces as he gets the strap around his shoulders. 

As he puts it on, he locks eyes with Erica, hovering to the side, frowning at him. She just looks at him, and there’s no venom there, no hatred, no anger. She feels bad. She feels like shit because she’s treated him so terribly and has said horrible things to him because she didn’t know how badly he was suffering. Stiles doesn’t know what to do with her guilt, cannot make her feel better because he’s a fucking open wound himself, so he looks away, at the ground, turning to face the crowd again. 

He strums a few times, while the screaming continues. He paces across the stage and he looks out and focuses on faces. Girls, boys, men, women, an entire sea of them, all here just to see him. Many of them have been waiting all god damn night to hear this fucking song. They have sat in their bedrooms and cried and related to it, memorized the lyrics, empathized with him, gotten tattoos, have spent hours upon hours playing it again and again and again, until the CD wouldn’t play anymore. Stiles has spent so long running away from this song, that it’s hard to imagine. 

They take it and make it something else. Something personal, to them. It’s something that he has always loved, about music. About writing. That people could hear what he wrote and be touched by it, in their own way. Many of them likely don’t even think about Matt Harding when they hear it. 

He goes to the microphone and he looks out at them all. They quiet down, just enough for him to clear his throat, and open his mouth to speak. “You know, it’s funny, because the sentiment of this song is that I would never come back to this city again, for as long as I live. Now here I am.” 

They cheer and clap. Stiles stands there, still and quiet, and allows it. 

“I know you guys love this song. And I thank you. For listening. It causes me a lot of pain,” his voice cracks in the microphone, and the crowd is so quiet you could hear a fucking pin drop. “And this is the last time I’ll ever play this fucking song. Just for you guys, one more time.” 

He pulls away and starts the intro, staring out across the crowd, sort of detached. He’s been detached for so long that it comes naturally to him, singing the lyrics, playing the chords, listening to the crowd sing it all back to him. In his nightmares, he hears this song. But tonight, he just gets through it. It’s like when Matt used to not just hit him, but beat the living hell out of him – Stiles would just get through it. He’d just go still, and small, and hope that it would be over soon. That’s what he’s been doing this entire tour. Making himself small. 

But he’s so tired of it. God dammit, he’s so fucking tired of it. 

He takes his last bow of the tour to an arena in complete chaos, screaming and cheering his name, and then he walks off stage, for the last time. He hands his guitar off. He stands there and listens to the crowd, watches the lights go on, the post show music starts up, and he just takes it in. 

It’s over. This thing he’s been dragging his half dead body through, for months. It’s done. There should be more fanfare. Confetti and champagne and dancers and the whole lot – but there’s not. This moment is quiet and personal. Just him, nodding to himself. He did it. No one else will congratulate him, so he’ll do it for himself. 

As promised, Derek is still exactly where Stiles left him; standing to the side, arms crossed, smiling a small smile in Stiles’ direction. The sight of him is like the first glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s all Stiles can do to go to him, collapse right into his arms and sigh. 

“You did it,” Derek tells him, with a pat or two on the back. “And you did it so well.”

Stiles pulls away from the hug, and he looks right at him. His hazel eyes, his dark hair, his cheekbones, his smooth skin. He reaches out and puts his hand on Derek’s face, cupping his cheek, and he says, “I know that we have a lot to talk about and I’m a fucking basket case and you – there are things you deserve to know. But I just want to get through this last night. And I just want to go home with you after. And I promise I’ll tell you. The video and – and we can talk. But not now. Is that okay?” 

Derek kisses Stiles on the forehead. “You know I can only do what you ask me to,” he says in a low voice, looking Stiles right in the eyes. “I’ll wait. It’s yours to tell me when you want to.” 

Derek knows what’s on the video. He doesn’t know the specifics, but he knows if there’s a video, then it’s gotta be of something that Matt did to him. Maybe he doesn’t want to know. Maybe it’d be best if he didn’t. If no one ever did. But it isn’t an option. Stiles gets that, now. It never was. 

“I can’t believe it’s over,” he holds both of Derek’s hands in his own and squeezes, shaking his head. “God, I thought I’d die on this tour.” Maybe the only reason he didn’t is because of Derek. 

The crew is breaking it all down. The drums, the stage, all of them moving quickly, skirting around where Stiles and Derek are standing. “Your birthday is in a couple of weeks,” Derek tells him, as if Stiles could ever forget that. “I’d like to show you a good time. If you want.” 

“A good time?” Stiles smiles, in spite of himself. 

“Maybe you want a party.” 

Stiles makes a face. 

“Okay, no party. Maybe you’d like to go to dinner.” 

“Maybe,” he shrugs. He hasn’t given much of a shit about his birthday in years, now. Both the birthdays he had when he was with Matt were complete nightmares; Matt would pretend like it was going to be a special day and then it would just be sex Stiles didn’t want and an inevitable argument that ended with Stiles crying in the bedroom, by himself. 

Then, Stiles shakes his head, as if shaking the thoughts away as well - he should really stop constantly comparing Derek and Matt, in his head. It’s not fair to Derek. 

Stiles leans in to kiss Derek on the mouth, just as a voice is calling Stiles’ name somewhere to their left. He turns his head and sees, like a specter from his nightmares, his father coming right for them, and Stiles reacts instantly. He shoves Derek’s hands off of him like they’ve caught fire, at the same time that Derek turns to see who’s coming for himself. He has no idea what Stiles’ dad looks like, but for some reason, he takes one look at the man, and he gets a wry smile on his face. Like he can just tell that’s Stiles’ fucking dad. 

“Uh, okay,” he says, hasty. His dad is maybe twenty feet away, and he’s stuck watching a couple of crew members hauling a big black box right in front of him, so he he’s not coming toward Stiles and Derek just yet. “…my dad. That’s my dad. He hates everyone I ever date and he can be a real asshole and he’s going to be shitty to you so just put on a brave fucking face.”

He says all this in a rush, in a hushed tone, while Derek just bends his neck low and listens, his eyes going bigger the more that Stiles says. Before he gets the chance to say anything back, Stiles’ father is right there, standing in front of them, with his hands perched on his hips. He’s glaring at Derek very critically. Stiles palms his face and takes in a deep breath. “Dad,” he greets, “uh, what are you doing here?”

“It’s your last show. I thought I’d surprise you,” he doesn’t even look at Stiles as he says this. His eyes are lasering holes into Derek’s head. 

His dad likely keeps up with the gossip about Stiles like a fan girl would. He knows who Derek Hale is. He knows that Derek and Stiles are having sex. He is not pleased with this information, not one bit, because he’s never pleased to learn that anyone anywhere is putting their hands on his only son. 

“Dad, this is Derek,” Stiles sighs, like he’s completely resigned to this going poorly.

“I know who he is,” his dad says, while Stiles sincerely thinks about pushing Derek back into one of the boxes the crew is working on packing up, locking him up in there, and having him carted away to the trucks, just so Derek won’t have to be put through this. 

Derek reaches his hand out, and Stiles’ dad immediately takes it. He’s doing the excessively firm and excessively rough dad handshake, Stiles can tell even just from looking at it. He introduces himself not just as Stiles’ dad, or as John Stilinski, but as _Sheriff_ Stilinski, because of course he fucking does. He sincerely believes that letting all the men that Stiles lets into his life know that he’s the Sheriff of a small town in the middle of fucking nowhere California is going to strike the fear of god in their hearts. 

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Derek says, with his movie star smile on. Stiles wants to pinch him in the side and tell him to not bother trying to charm Stiles’ dad. The man is uncharmable. He’s like a snake. “Stiles speaks very highly of you.”

“Uh huh,” he narrows his eyes. God, he hates Derek’s fucking guts, for no reason, none whatsoever. “That’s funny, because Stiles has told me next to nothing about you.”

“Because you’re a fucking lunatic,” Stiles tells him through grit teeth, before shooting Derek an apologetic and anxious smile. “Can I speak to you alone for a second?” 

Before his dad even has a chance to say yes or no to that, Derek excuses himself and makes himself scarce. He leaves with a lingering touch to Stiles’ lower back, which his father does not miss for one second, and heads off and away, likely to find where the band is congregating to hang out with them for a couple of minutes. 

Stiles watches him go, his broad shoulders, his black hair, and then he turns to his dad and frowns. “What are you doing here?”

“I told you,” he insists, “I came to surprise you. Last show. It’s a big deal.”

“You’ve never come to –“

“You’ve never invited me,” he corrects before Stiles can even finish, and Stiles looks away. That’s true. Stiles doesn’t typically invite his dad to come see the shows, hasn’t invited him since halfway through his last tour, when Matt’s hooks were starting to dig deeper and deeper into Stiles’ skin. Stiles hasn’t invited him to a single show on this tour. Partly because they either weren’t or were barely speaking, and partly because he didn’t want his dad to see him like this. “I came to take you home, too.”

Aha, and that’s the truth. That’s what all this is really about. Stiles makes a face and rears his neck back, shaking his head. “Take me home?”

“You need to get away from all this nonsense,” he gestures around, the crew, the guitars, the venue itself, the sound of the crowd still trickling out of the arena. “You need to come home and be with your family, people who actually give a shit about you, not these fucking – Hollywood bullshit people, like Derek idiotic Hale.”

Derek idiotic Hale. “Gee, dad, why don’t you tell me how you really feel?”

“I’m not arguing with you about this,” he snaps, dad voice on, Sheriff’s voice on. It’s the kind of tone that used to have Stiles quaking in his boots when he was a kid, but now just makes Stiles blink and cock his head to the side. “You are going to get on a plane and come back to Beacon Hills.”

“No,” Stiles shakes his head, resolutely. “I don’t want to.”

“You need help,” he takes Stiles by his arm, grips, like he thinks Stiles is going to try to walk away from him. “Kid. You need help, and being around these people isn’t helping.” 

“By these people, you’re referring to Derek again?”

“Him, and the rest of them.”

“Derek isn’t like the rest of them.”

His hand tightens. “I’m not going to argue with you,” he hisses, and he means it. As far as he’s concerned, Stiles is already on the plane with him, going back to his hometown, where his dad is going to force him into rehab, force him to talk about what happened to him, force him to stay away from Derek, because Derek is going to turn out to be just like all of them have been. 

“Locking me away in my kid bedroom isn’t going to solve anything, dad,” he rips his arm away, but he stands his ground. “It’s not going to make things better.”

“It’ll get you away from these leeches,” he once again gestures to the room at large. “You think these people care about you?”

Stiles takes in a deep breath, and he closes his eyes. “Dad. I am not going.”

“What the hell are you going to do about all this, then? Huh? You’re just going to drink yourself to death, is that it? What are you going to _do_ , Stiles!” 

“I don’t know yet,” he says, and he’s serious. Before, he had been holding onto his resolve that he would go the rest of his life, he would die, before anyone ever found out what happened to him in these past few years. The shame, the humiliation, the circus, all of it was too much for him to bear. He knew he’d never be able to get up and tell the truth. He was too much of a coward. 

Now, he doesn’t know. 

“…look, I’ve gotta go meet some fans, and all that. I’ll get dinner with you after, okay?”

His dad puts his hands on his hips again, and Stiles imagines him in his Beacon Hills Sheriff uniform, with his utility belt on. His gun, his badge. When Stiles was a kid, he thought that his dad was a superhero who could solve any problem, save anyone, protect anyone from harm’s way. Then he grew up. Stiles knows where he gets his alcoholism from, and likely, so does his father, and it kills him to think that he’s passing that problem down, generation to generation. 

His dad is no hero. He’s just a man who does his best with what he’s given. It’s more than enough, Stiles has always thought so, but his dad thinks he’s failed his son. What happened wasn’t his fault, but something in his brain tells him that it was. 

“I’m worried about you,” he tells Stiles, voice somber and sad. All his father has done these past few years is worry about Stiles. It must be exhausting, all the time. “I don’t want to lose you, again, because of some asshole.” 

Even though it’s not appropriate, Stiles can’t help but laugh at that. “Derek isn’t some asshole, trust me. You don’t know him. Seriously, I promise we’ll get dinner and we’ll talk, but I really have to go.” 

“Okay,” his dad does not sound convinced, but he doesn’t reach out to try and grab Stiles when Stiles starts to move away. He just stands, frowning, watching Stiles go with a tight expression on his face. He wishes that he could put Stiles in a suitcase and drag him kicking and screaming all the way back to his childhood home, most likely. He thinks that everything would get better, if he could just get Stiles back at home, where Stiles will be under his own close watch, but Stiles knows better. 

He would be miserable, there. Miserable. He doesn’t know where on earth he could possibly be happy, but it would not be hiding out in Beacon Hills, that is for god damn sure. 

When he walks into the meet and greet room with Derek Hale, the girls from his fan club all sort of balk at them – Stiles hadn’t told anyone that he was bringing Derek along with him, and now they’re all staring like he’s just walked in with an alpaca on a leash, or something. They don’t say that Derek can’t be there or that he has to stand behind the camera, but they do nervously clear their throats and avoid eye contact with him, because he makes them nervous. 

They’re more than used to Stiles, at this point. Derek, for whatever reason, they cannot even look at. It’s because he’s hot, most likely. 

As they stand against the giant blown up backdrop of the album cover, the small fire in the woods somewhere, Stiles takes Derek by his wrist and says, “I am so fucking sorry about that. My dad is nuttier than most, I had no idea he would be here to attack you like that.” 

“I owe you one, remember?” He lifts an eyebrow. “Remember when you got dragged to breakfast with my sisters and my mother, and my mom came close to pulling out her wedding planning workbook?” 

Stiles snorts. “Oh, but your mother is a nice lady. My dad is going to cut you open and cook your insides.” 

Derek rolls his eyes, like Stiles is being dramatic. Honestly, Stiles sort of isn’t. 

“I know we were supposed to have sex and everything after,” he says this loud and clear in front of four people, who all stop and stare at him for a second after he does, but he doesn’t care. “But now my dad is here. I have to have dinner with him.”

“I’ll come,” Derek shrugs.

“You do not have to, seriously.”

“I’d like to come,” he insists, again, and Stiles stares at him. 

“Derek. He is going to bite your head off, chew it up, and spit it out.” 

“I owe you one,” he repeats, a grin spreading across his face. 

Stiles almost starts to do that thing he always does, whenever Derek does something nice to him or for him. Where he immediately calls to mind the memory of Matt being in the exact same situation and being horrible, terrible, making Stiles feel like shit and ruining his life, just to compare and contrast the two men, as if there could ever be a Venn diagram on earth between these two. Their Venn diagram would just be two completely separate circles, not a single part touching. 

He shakes his head and, for the first time, does not think about Matt. 

“Okay, if you insist. But I warned you,” he wags his finger, but Derek just smiles wider, like he thinks it’s funny. Like the idea of being put on trial at the dinner table with Stiles’ dad interrogating him is more funny to him than anything else. 

The first fan gets ushered in, and it’s a fourteen year old girl who immediately bursts into hysterical tears at the sight of Stiles standing there. She doesn’t even barely notice that Derek is there, going through the motions of wrapping her arms around Stiles and hugging him and telling him that he’s important to her and she loves him and he’s so great, while Derek just stands and watches. 

When she finally gets a hold of herself enough to pull away and wipe at her eyes, she looks at Derek. She blinks, and then looks to Stiles as if for confirmation. Shakily, she asks, in a whisper, as though Derek would not hear her, “is that Derek Hale?”

“No. Eerily convincing look alike,” Stiles jokes – at her baffled expression, he realizes that she is in the no-humor zone, so he shakes his head and says, “yes, that’s Derek Hale. He had nothing better to do.”

She seems to not know what to do about him. She glances at him, and then immediately looks back at Stiles. “Is he your boyfriend?”

Stiles has been asked this question many, many times before. For months on end, he has been getting asked this question, and every single time, the answer has been no, because it had to be no. Because Stiles wasn’t ready, because Stiles was still stuck in his apartment in Nashville, because Stiles had to keep Derek at an arm’s length away for his own sanity, because he thought that was the right thing to do. All this time of trying, and failing, and trying, and failing, Stiles only ever saw that as evidence that he couldn’t be a normal person with a normal boyfriend. 

Stiles has been doing the work. He has been pushing himself every single fucking day, and even when he failed. Even when he got up on that stage in Las Vegas and couldn’t even play his guitar, he was doing the fucking work. Derek is not a guy from a romance novel who comes in and magically fixes Stiles life, because no one is that guy, because life doesn’t work like that – Derek has just been there. Like a rock, in the ocean, letting the waves crash against him again and again. It means more than Stiles could ever say. 

“Yeah,” Stiles tells her, “he’s my boyfriend. You want a picture with him in it, as well?”

She immediately agrees, even as she shoots a furtive glance in Derek’s direction again. He intimidates her, it would seem. All the same, she stands right in the middle of the two of them and smiles as the flash goes off, gushes at both of them in thanks, and off she goes. 

In the interim period between her and the next fans, Derek turns to Stiles and says, “do you ever get used to people saying shit like that to you?”

Stiles shrugs. “I guess I sort of got numb to it at some point.”

Derek smiles at him, “and since when am I your boyfriend?”

“Oh, whatever,” he blushes and looks away, at the floor. “You don’t have to be so smug about it, you know.” 

“Smug?”

“Because you finally wore me down.”

They smile at one another, because both of them know that’s not really how it happened, not even close. 

They do the rest of the fans; there’s a group of twenty-something girls who lose their fucking minds when they walk in and see both Stiles and Derek standing there, and a gay kid who about passes out at the sheer sight of them, and some younger kids who sort of regard Derek like they’re seeing a superhero in real time. The pictures come out hilarious, as Stiles had anticipated that they would, and it’s frankly the most fun he thinks he’s had in a long time. It’s miraculous that something not shitty could’ve possibly come out of this Nashville trip, but really, several not shitty things have come out of this Nashville trip. 

Stiles and Derek are together for real. Here, of all places on earth. Stiles could laugh out loud at the irony of that shit.

**

After Stiles and Derek left Nashville, and after the tour was finally over, when Stiles was free and not bound to any sort of schedule, he immediately ran back to his home in Malibu. Derek had to go to California for Thanksgiving and he was going to be gone for an entire week and a half, wiling his time away with his family, while Stiles holed himself up by the beach, decompressing, laying on his couch, staring at his ceiling.

The dinner with Stiles’ dad had been…well, terrible. But not nearly as bad as Stiles would have expected it to be. His dad had been disappointed when he saw Derek walking up with Stiles, instead of just getting Stiles alone to corner him and harass him and demand he come back home, and he had been gruff and awkward at first. Derek was sort of relentless, in trying to get the Sheriff to talk to him, in making an effort to get to know him, even though the man was fucking surly at best and a complete dick at worst. 

But, no one got punched in the face, which was a win as far as Stiles was concerned. Likely, his dad is never going to like or trust Derek, which is fine. Even before there was a literal movie villain that Stiles let into bed with him, the Sheriff didn’t like other men coming around his son. Least of all great big ones with anger issues who have beat people up on camera a lot. 

Stiles spends his first couple of days alone in Malibu just thinking. He smokes ten cigarettes a day, sits on his back patio with his sunglasses and a frown, drinking wine, and thinks. He never thought he would make it out of a trip back to Nashville alive, but he did it. And not only did he make it out alive, he came out the other side for the better. He thinks about he and Derek’s relationship, and he thinks about the fans, and he thinks about how just ten months ago, he had a hard time even getting out of bed in the morning. 

Derek calls him every morning and every night, even when they don’t have that much to talk about. He calls and says that everyone is pretty revved up about him coming over for Christmas, that the Starbucks Stiles used to work at really does have a plaque up just like Laura had said. That he misses Stiles, can’t wait to see Stiles again, wants to be with Stiles every possible waking second. 

These are sentiments that used to make Stiles want to throw Derek off a cliff just to give him a wake up call. But now when Derek says shit like that, Stiles just smiles, and agrees and nods his head. He feels the same way. It’s not wrong for him to feel this way. He has spent so much time convincing himself he wasn’t allowed to have anything this nice, wasn’t allowed to feel this way, and now he’s just given up on all that. 

Fuck it. Matt took everything from him, and what he didn’t take, he just ruined and left behind. Stiles is learning how to pick up the pieces and fix them, rather than simply standing over the ruins and crying at their destruction. 

It is in that vein that Stiles decides to show Derek the video. 

Derek is in Malibu the week after Thanksgiving, sitting on Stiles’ tangerine couch. Stiles had promised Derek that he would tell him what the video that Boyd kept mentioning was, but he never actually did, and Derek was sensitive enough to know not to bring it up or try and force Stiles to tell him. Derek imagined what it was, anyway. But he couldn’t really imagine what it was actually like. 

They kiss and talk for a while. Derek has got a family picture that he brought with him, and he lays it out on the coffee table, pointing to each individual sister and calling them by them. This one is Mary, and she thinks you’re overrated. This one is Heather, and she wishes you were bisexual because she thinks you’re really cute. This is Aunt Molly, who’s psycho and has lots of cats and will probably ask you really invasive questions about being gay because she was weirdly religious for a while but is now working on being more open minded. 

Stiles listens and laughs. He’s never been with anyone who’s had such a big family like Derek, so he gets a bit nervous and he hopes that he’ll make a good impression, and that no one thinks he’s just this shitty fucking alcoholic who uses men like their brother to write his bullshit songs. 

In spite of all that, Derek seems giddy at the prospect of bringing Stiles home for Christmas. Because he’s a normal man with a normal family, and he wants them to like Stiles and get to know him and understand what Derek sees in him. 

Stiles pushes the family picture away and pulls his laptop closer to them. He clears his throat and says, “I gotta show you something,” and Derek blinks, like he’s surprised. Stiles pulls the flash drive that Lydia had made for him, not the original because she’d never trust him with it, out from his jean pocket, and holds it in the palm of his hand. 

Derek stares at it, while the laptop comes to life on the coffee table. He says, “is that…?” He already knows what it is. Stiles doesn’t have to tell him. He had promised, after all, and in spite of what a piece of shit he’s been these last few years, he’s not one to break promises. 

He puts the flash drive in and pulls the file up, double clicking it before he can talk himself out of it. Then he just sits, with his hands stuffed into his pockets, as they video plays. As Derek sees it all happen. He watches Stiles and Matt get on the elevator, watches them argue, and then he only makes it as far as the first crack of Matt’s hand across Stiles’ face. The one that sends Stiles against the wall, that has him bent over in pain, clutching his face – he reaches forward and slams the laptop shut.

It’s abrupt enough that Stiles jumps in surprise, breath catching in his throat. 

“I’ve seen enough,” he says. He sounds angry. He sounds very, very angry, and when Stiles looks at him, he sees the tell tale signs of him trying to control himself. The stillness. The intense look in his eyes like he’s convincing himself to not get angry, to not lose his temper, to not smash the laptop through the glass of the coffee table, or punch a hole in the wall somewhere in Stiles’ living room. 

Stiles waits quietly, as Derek breathes in and out, in and out. He looks at the veins on Derek’s arms, his hands, his legs, how strong he is, how easy it would be for him to treat Stiles the exact same way that Matt had. How if Derek wanted to overpower him, he could. If Derek wanted to beat him, he could.

It’s important for Stiles to know this. And it’s important for him to know it, to acknowledge it, because it goes hand in hand with the knowledge that Derek would never do any of those things. He could. He won’t. It doesn’t ever cross his mind to do those things, because Derek is a real man, like in the movies, like Stiles has fantasized about. All those songs he’s written, they don’t hold a candle to what it’s like when you really find someone worth writing about. 

Derek takes in one more deep breath and looks at Stiles. It’s a look that Stiles is familiar with – it’s the one that Boyd had on his face, after he pulled Matt off of Stiles’ body in Nashville. The one that Erica had on her face on stage right before Stiles played Nashville. The one that Lydia had on hers when she showed Stiles this exact video. The one he knows that everyone else is going to have on when he uses this video against Matt, when that day comes, if it ever does. 

“What are you going to do with this?” Derek asks, voice even.

Stiles says, “I don’t know.” 

“You know you could ruin his entire life with this.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Derek looks at him some more. He will not press the issue, and he will not make Stiles do anything that he doesn’t want to do – he’s just making sure Stiles is aware of what he’s got in his hands. The kind of power that he has. Stiles has never had power over Matt, not even for a second, not even when he thought the guy was in love with him. This is huge. He knows it’s huge. He knows what he’s fucking got. He knew the first second he saw it. 

“I’m not ready,” he confesses, and Derek nods his head. That’s all he needs to know. He reaches out and pulls Stiles against his body and holds him. He holds him so hard and tight and long, while Stiles melts into him and imagines that they’re in Vancouver again, in Derek’s big bedroom, with the water to their left out the window. “I don’t want them to know, yet.”

“Who?”

Stiles sucks in a deep breath, against Derek’s chest. “The fans.”

“Jesus, Stiles.”

“They’re going to fucking hate me,” he admits this fear out loud for the first time, curling himself into Derek’s body as much as he can, making himself smaller. “They think I’m so great, and I’m not. I let him…”

“That’s not true,” Derek insists, hugging Stiles closer to him. “Stiles, they’re not going to think of you any differently.”

“And everyone else is going to laugh at me, or hate me, or think I’m exaggerating, or that Matt didn’t do anything wrong, or I did something to deserve it.” 

This, Derek really has no place to deny, because it is most certainly what will happen, but he does it all the same. “That’s not going to happen.”

It is going to happen. Derek is just being nice, again. When this gets out, his fans are going to be so fucking disappointed in him. He’s supposed to be this amazing person who stands up for himself and writes exactly what he means and isn’t afraid to tell the truth, and they’re going to see. The rose colored glasses are going to come off, and the curtain is going to fall down, and they’re going to see him for what he really is. Stiles can’t bear the thought of it. And the rest of the world will say horrible things about him. They’ll revile him and call him names and they’ll all hate him, because he’s knocking a guy they all thought was great right off of his pedestal. 

Stiles learned a very long time ago that most people would love to see him torn down. He knows some people are going to watch that video and enjoy it. He is sure of it. That scares him, to think of people getting off on his torment. But they’re out there. 

All of these things will happen, no matter what Stiles does or says. He can’t stop it. And he isn’t ready. He doesn’t know what’s going to have to happen, to make him ready, to make him brave enough to weather the storm, but he just knows it’s not now.

**

“I thought you said you didn’t want a birthday party?”

“I don’t want a birthday party, and it’s not a birthday party. It’s a party that happens to also be on my birthday.”

Derek frowns at him in the mirror, fiddling with his collar. “When I offered to throw you a birthday party, you scoffed directly in my face.”

“It’s a party for the end of the tour, that just so happens to coincide with my birthday,” he reiterates, for only the ten thousandth time since Stiles told Derek about this party. Really, Stiles would much rather not have any party whatsoever, but this is less a party for him, and more a party for everyone who spent the last eight months working their asses off on a tour that Stiles was, quite frankly, barely emotionally present for. The least he can do is show up to their party. Even if it is on his birthday. 

“I had plans for your birthday, you know,” Derek reminds him, and he’s got a clear case of the sour grapes about this entire thing. 

“Oh, what were your plans? Dinner? Sex?”

Derek makes a face in the mirror. “ _Good_ dinner. _Good_ sex.” 

“We can still do both of those things. After the party,” he turns away from the glass and looks at Derek head-on, giving him a smile that he hopes is a bit of a consolation. “You could just not come, you know.”

Derek laughs, and he shakes his head. “You and I are practically stitched together on our sides. I’d go pretty much anywhere with you.”

That is true. Ever since Derek got back from his Thanksgiving break, he’s been living in Stiles’ Malibu house out of the same suitcase he had packed for a different trip. They go to the beach and hold hands and eat takeout and watch movies and have tons, really gallons upon gallons, of sex. They haven’t spent a single second apart since he got here. Even though Stiles means it when he says Derek does not have to come to this party, there’s a part of him that really dreads the thought of him not being there with him.

Stiles is attached. He wants to bundle Derek up and knit him into a sweater that he can wear all the time. He’s got co-dependency issues, and that’s something he certainly needs to work on, but he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong or unhealthy with his obsession with Derek Hale. He’s like cat nip. 

In the backseat of the big black armored car that drives them into LA at sunset, Stiles and Derek spend most of the time kissing. It’s not normal kissing, either – it’s, like, we’ve gotta swallow each other’s tongues or else the world is going to end type of shit. Fuck or die type of shit. Derek presses kisses along Stiles’ jaw and neck and Stiles catches his breath, grips onto Derek’s arm, wants to have sex with him right here and right now, the party be damned –

A throat clears from the front of the car. The passenger seat. Stiles opens his eyes to find Boyd’s glaring at him in the rear view mirror. “There’s other people in here, you know.”

“I would’ve thought you’d learned how to tune me out years ago,” Stiles pushes Derek away all the same, much to Derek’s evident chagrin. 

Boyd looks at him in the mirror, again. “Unfortunately not.”

They haven’t really spoken to one another since their fight in Nashville, when Stiles tried to hit him and threatened to fire him and sue him, in one fell swoop. Stiles and Boyd have had lots and lots of disagreements over the years, thanks in a large part to Stiles’ complete aversion to authority figures and being told what to do, but this one…was sort of different. Stiles has wanted to apologize to him, time and time again, but he has bitten his tongue, because he still does not believe that he was wrong. 

It was wrong to try and hit him and it was wrong to attack him like that. But what Boyd had done, spreading Stiles’ secrets around like they were his to tell, no matter his reasoning, was not okay. Boyd offers no apologies. Neither does Stiles. They’re at a stalemate.

Derek holds Stiles’ hand and looks out the window, watching the other cars go by, the billboards, the buildings, and Stiles wonders what he’s thinking about. He wishes sometimes that he could climb inside of Derek’s head, like a swimming pool, and go wading through all of his thoughts and secrets and desires. He hasn’t wanted to know someone this personally, this badly, in so long, but it is an old welcome feeling. He can’t wait to go home and see where Derek slept when he was a kid, he can’t wait to go meet all the people that made Derek who he is. It’s nice, to allow himself these things, instead of viciously telling himself he’s not allowed to have them. 

Derek turns and meets his eyes, catching Stiles watching him. “You’re staring,” he says. 

“I like you,” Stiles admits.

Up front, Boyd makes a gagging sound that both of them ignore. 

“Do you think your family is going to like me very much?” Stiles asks, shifting his eyes down to where their hands are entwined, fiddling with Derek’s fingers. 

“Most of them already do. Are you nervous?” He asks this question like he can’t believe it, that Stiles Stilinski of all people could ever be nervous, especially over something as silly as meeting Derek’s fucking family. “Don’t be nervous. They’re going to like you. They think you’re a genius.”

“Mary thinks I’m overrated,” Stiles reminds him with a grim smile. 

Derek smiles back. “Oh, she’s just pretentious. Once you walk into the room she’ll get star struck and awkward, trust me.” 

“I’m just thinking about how many different things have been printed about me this past year,” he stares pointedly downwards, tracing his finger along the back of Derek’s hand. “About the Vegas show, and my drinking, and how I’m a fuck up. All that shit.”

“Well. They’ve also read everything that’s been printed about me. That I’m a psychopath, and I punch cars over minor indiscretions, and I yell at PA’s. They still like me.”

“They have to like you. You buy them cars.”

“So, buy my sisters a car,” he shrugs. He’s joking, Stiles knows that he’s joking, but maybe he should be trying to buy into their good graces. Christ, money is his only redeeming quality anymore. “You’re doing that thing you do, where you overthink everything to the point where you’ve already turned it into a disaster in your head. We’re talking about eating lasagna at my mother’s house, for Christ’s sake.” 

Derek says this like it’s a complete non-issue, but it’s a really big deal to Stiles. He just wants to make a good impression. He’s already picked out his outfit, his best jeans and his nicest red shirt, because he’s fucking freaking out about it. Derek’s nonchalance is not rubbing off on him, not in the least fucking bit. 

They pull up to the bar where the party’s taking place, and the paparazzi are outside. Cameras flash as other people of note walk up, and Stiles sighs and glares out the window. Ten months ago, the thought of stepping out here into this lion’s den would’ve made him have a complete panic attack, would’ve made him clam up, go still, to the point where he’d have been totally unable to open the car door for himself. 

Now, he just pops the door open with his hand clasped in Derek’s and steps out. He accepts the flashes, the clicks, the people calling his name, and he ignores it all. He even smiles a little bit. 

The place is loud inside. It’s lit up purple, that’s the first thing that Stiles notices about it; it’s a great big purple room, with white couches and trendy people everywhere, most of whom Stiles can honestly say he does not recognize. There is a big banner over by the DJ booth that says _happy birthday Stiles_ , and when he goes up to the bar to order he and Derek a couple of drinks, the bartender says his tab is getting taken care of by Lydia. 

He turns and has to lean into Derek’s ear to be heard over the music, while they wait for their drinks to come. “Drinks are on my manager tonight, apparently.” Because what better way to say happy birthday to the struggling alcoholic than providing him with an open bar? 

They go and find a spot to sit, and wind up at a couch right across from someone he’s never seen before and one of the Queer Eye guys that Stiles absolutely fucking despises. Who put together the guest list for this thing, he thinks bitterly, shoving his face into his drink and rolling his eyes. Derek presses his body right up against Stiles’ and endures it, as people come up to them and wish Stiles a happy birthday and congratulations for the end of the tour. 

People either ignore Derek completely or reach their hands out to shake once, quick, before focusing all their attention right back on Stiles. They’re shmoozing to him, anyway. Some of these people, other artists or producers, come to shit like this just to get their name in Stiles’ head, just on the off chance that when he’s putting together his next record, he’ll think of them. It’s all fake bullshit. Stiles drinks and holds Derek’s hand. This isn’t the worst birthday he’s ever had, but it’s climbing up to the top ten shittiest list more and more as the night goes on. 

Then, Erica comes walking up. She’s in a skin tight black dress that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination – it’s so absurd of a dress that Derek actually double-takes her when he sees her coming, probably completely unable to help himself. She is ridiculously hot after all, so Stiles cannot really blame him.

She sits down right next to him on the couch, and she purses her dark purple lips for a moment, looking at him. She looks at Derek, and sticks her hand out toward him. “Hi. I’m Erica. We never formally met.”

Derek shakes her hand and nods. 

When she takes her hand away, she sets it down in her lap and sighs, giving Stiles that look again. You know. The _I feel sorry for you_ look that Stiles hates so much. “I was such an asshole to you all year long.”

Stiles does not want to have this conversation. Not here, or anywhere, or ever. He waves his hand like it’s fine, it’s whatever, just forget about it, but she keeps talking.

“I know you’re, like, beyond pissed at Boyd, but it’s not necessarily his fault,” she grins, showing all her teeth, and it’s a bizarre facial expression for her to make in this moment. “I more or less wrestled it out of him after months of harassing him about it. Then when he told me, I was just like…whoa.”

“You really don’t have to do this.”

“I kinda do. Because, I’m your friend. I know I haven’t acted like it because I’m a bitch,” another bizarre grin. She’s so crazy. “But I am. And I should’ve noticed…any number of things. Instead I just saw what I wanted to and treated you like shit for it. There’s no excuse. I feel like trash over it.”

Stiles meets her eyes, and they’re sincere, which is rare for Erica. She’s got this tough as nails exterior that offers no sincerity, no tender moments, no softness, none of that, but in this moment, she’s all of those things. She feels guilty and she just wants Stiles to tell her that he doesn’t resent her for the way that she treated him, that’s all she really wants. 

He clears his throat. “It’s okay,” he says. He pats her on the arm a couple of times. 

Derek sips his drink and is looking away, as if to afford them a little bit of privacy, even though he’s an eavesdropper and is sitting there listening to this entire thing. 

“It’s not. I owe you, like, a million hours of girl time for how shitty I’ve been.”

Stiles’ lips quirk at the corners. Girl time. He hasn’t heard that phrase in years. Back in the day, he and Erica used to be very good friends – they bonded over their mutual love of talking shit about people and eating copious amounts of junk food. Erica ironically started referring to their hangouts as ‘girl time’ because by and large, Stiles’ desire to gossip and eat Chinese food was the gayest thing about him, other than liking dicks up his ass. 

Once he got together with Matt, that sort of all went away. It was Matt’s biggest goal, to whittle and chisel at Stiles’ friendships until there was nothing left, until all Stiles had was him. Erica didn’t understand why she had a close friend and then suddenly didn’t anymore, and she got angry and she took that anger out on him in unfair ways, because she didn’t see what was really happening. Matt won that round. 

“Unless this guy is going to get rid of all your friends, too,” she points at Derek, who tunes back into the conversation, with a bemused smile on his face. 

“No,” Stiles shakes his head, patting Derek on the knee. “Not him, trust me.” 

She smiles. A real smile. Not the crazy person smile. Then she leans in and hugs him, squishing herself up against him and putting her mouth right next to his ear. “You should ruin his life, Stiles. It’ll be fun. And cathartic.” 

She pulls away and sticks her straw in her mouth, winks at them, and stands, vanishing out into the party. It’s not a surprise that Erica finds ruining men’s lives entertaining, considering Stiles has seen her do similar things to men who have wronged her in much less shitty ways than Matt wronged Stiles, so he just smiles at her retreating back and turns to face Derek again. Maybe this isn’t such a bad birthday after all. 

“She seems nice,” Derek tells him, and Stiles shakes his head. 

“She’s not.”

“Oh,” Derek laughs. 

He jabs his straw in his empty drink, all ice and a cherry dug into the bottom of the cup, and he is struck by the realization that his life is completely different than it was at the start of this god forsaken tour. He has suffered so much in these months, and he has failed, and he has made an asshole out of himself, and he’s drank himself stupid, and the entire time, when he was down in it, all he could think was how he’s fucking treading water. He was one wrong move away from drowning the entire time. That’s how it felt. 

But looking around now, thinking back on it from the outside looking in, he has to blink and just…take a second. At the start of the tour, he and Scott were barely speaking. Now, they talk every day. He and Lydia were on terrible terms, constantly fighting, and now, maybe they’re not best friends and likely never will be again, but they understand each other. Erica thought he was this great big piece of shit, and now she wants to be his friend again. He had shut his father out and locked the door on him, and now they’re speaking again. 

And, Derek. Most of all Derek. His fuck buddy. His friend. That all changed, too. Because Derek Hale went from being the guy that Stiles would not allow himself to have, to being everything to him. He went into this tour with nothing. Some bottles of liquor and a pack of cigarettes, and his pain. 

Now, it’s like he’s cobbling his life back together. 

He excuses himself to the bathroom and has to kind of search to find it, because he’s never been to this bar before. It’s towards the back, in a hallway, underneath a great big sign with an arrow pointing down into the darkness of it. It’s a bit of a long hallway with minimal lighting, but there are a handful of people milling around, tucked away into corners, murmuring to one another to get away from the loud music and lights of the main room. A couple of them recognize him and say hello to him and he says hello back, before dipping into the men’s room to piss. 

As he’s washing his hands, rubbing the soap all over, he glances up and meets his own eyes in the mirror. He blinks at what he sees. He does not look miserable. It’s depressing that this is where the bar is set for progress, but Christ, it’s something. He doesn’t look hungover or exhausted or sad or too thin – he looks…like himself. The kid from before, the one who hadn’t gone through all that bullshit. Older, yes, but it’s him. 

He dries his hands off and tosses the paper towel in the trash, pushing the swinging door open to come back out into the dim little hallway. He walks two steps, maybe three, and then bumps into someone before he realizes what’s happening. 

He says, “excuse me, sorry,” staggering back a bit to make room for the stranger to get around him – but big hands wrap around Stiles’ upper arms. It’s alarming to be touched like this by some random person in a dark hallway, so he tries to pull away, shaking his head and finally looking up to meet this person’s eyes head on. 

Stiles feels the blood leave his face, lightning fast. He goes cold, clammy, mouth opening and closing around unspoken words. Matt Harding has got his hands on Stiles’ body. He’s inches away from him, looking right at him, with this sly smile on his face, like no time has passed. None whatsoever. These are the hands that have beaten Stiles so bad he couldn’t get up the next day, that have thrown Stiles into glass and made him bleed, made him cry, made him beg for it to stop, that have wrapped around Stiles’ neck to try and squeeze the life out of him. 

And Matt smiles at him. He smiles. “Why do you look so surprised?” He asks, cocking his head to the side. “I wouldn’t forget your birthday.”

Stiles is frozen. Completely paralyzed. When Matt moves him away, deeper into the hallway, into the darkness, where no one else is around, he doesn’t fight it. Because Stiles never actually learned how to fight Matt off. He never learned how to be stronger than him, faster than him, smarter than him, any of it. He only ever learned how to go still and quiet, so that’s what he does. He goes stiff. He allows himself to be pulled away from where anyone can help him. It’s all he knows how to do. 

He’s pressed up against the wall. Matt puts his hand on the wall right next to his head, so his arm boxes him in, so he’s stuck, even as Stiles’ eyes dart to the tunnel of light outside the hallway where there’s other people and where Boyd is, where Derek is, where his friends are, people who know that Matt shouldn’t be here. 

Because Stiles hasn’t told everyone that Matt shouldn’t be here. It’s how Matt even got in here. He’s Stiles’ ex-boyfriend, he’s still on the list, of course come right in, because Stiles has been too chicken shit to admit what happened to him, and now here he is. Because Stiles had basically rolled out the fucking welcome mat for him. 

Matt notices his eyes searching for a way out of this, and he furrows his brow. “What’s the matter? You don’t like me anymore?”

“I –“ Stiles can’t look directly at Matt’s face. He keeps his eyes on the floor, and then he looks up when he hears someone’s footsteps coming. Just a stranger, heading to the bathroom, and Stiles wants to say _help me, get him away from me_ , but the words die in his throat. 

“You know how long I’ve waited to have an opportunity to finally talk to you again?” He asks, and he reaches his free hand out and touches Stiles. On the face. It’s this reverent, gentle touch, the kind of touch that would trick Stiles into thinking that Matt loved him, years ago. “You fucking cut me out of your life like I was nothing to you, when you know, you know, you know you and I belong together.”

These are the kinds of insane rants that Matt always used to go on. He’d wax poetic about how Stiles is the only person on earth he cares about, and so Matt should be the only person on earth that Stiles cares about, not his friends, his family, because Matt and Stiles belong together. No one else fits into the narrative. Just him and Stiles, alone, forever. 

“I’m the only one who could ever put up with your bullshit,” he pulls his hand off of Stiles’ face and uses it to pound the wall, right next to Stiles’ head. Stiles flinches. He curls in on himself and he’s so scared, in this moment, that he’s going to die. He is petrified that Matt is going to finally do it. What he couldn’t do in Nashville, because they stopped him before he could. 

After all, Stiles has been mentally trapped there all this time, all this time, and it would be the only logical ending to this story. If Matt suffocated him right here, right now. He is angry enough to do it. 

“…you think there’s anyone else on this earth who could love you, the way that I do? And you need me,” he points to his chest, and Stiles finds himself nodding. Insanely, he finds himself nodding. Agree at all costs. Self-preservation at all costs. “You fucking need me, all that bullshit you wrote about me, all that bullshit you said about me, do you have any idea what it’s been like for me?”

“I didn’t –“

“I’m talking,” he barks, right into Stiles’ face, so Stiles goes quiet. Clamps his jaw shut. It’s just like in that bar in Boston, when all Matt had to do was look at him, and Stiles became that meek little piece of shit that Matt kicked around for fun. Too afraid to move or speak out of fear of being hurt. Matt grabs him by his jaw and forces Stiles to look up at him, right at him, so their eyes meet. Stiles swallows the lump in his throat and he thinks, this is it. This is it. “…I’m going to make you love me again. You’ll see. You can’t be without me. You need me. You’re going to leave here with me. I’m going to take you home, where you belong, and you’ll see. You –“

“Hey,” comes from the end of the hallway. It’s harsh, loud, and Stiles doesn’t immediately recognize the voice – he turns, and so does Matt. The light is behind him so it’s just a silhouette, but it’s Derek Hale. Stiles knows it’s Derek, and from the way Matt frowns and squints, it seems like Matt knows that it’s Derek, too. Stiles only hadn’t recognized that voice because Derek never speaks to him like that. 

Derek steps forward. He’s wearing a sleek black jacket that he shrugs out out of, even as he’s coming closer and closer to them, and he throws it off to the side, as Matt stands up straight, pulling his arms away from Stiles, so Stiles has room to move. Derek undoes the buttons on his shirt sleeves, rolls his sleeves up to the elbow like he’s getting ready to get a job done, and Matt sighs through his nose. 

“This fucking guy again,” he mutters under his breath, and Stiles panics. 

“Derek, calm down,” he says, but it’s pointless. He has never seen Derek angry before, but he sees it now – and he can tell, just from the way his shoulders are in a tight line, the way he’s already prepared for the fight, the way his jaw is set, that nothing anybody says is going to keep him from going absolutely fucking ballistic. This is the side of Derek Stiles has never seen before. 

Stiles tries to move forward, to put himself in between Derek and Matt, because he’s genuinely afraid of what Matt is going to do to Derek – but Matt stops him. He pushes Stiles back, against the wall, hard. So hard the wall rattles and Stiles grunts. It’s the exact wrong fucking thing to do, considering Derek is already lividly angry at the prospect of Matt even being in Stiles’ general vicinity. 

Putting his hands on Stiles is the final nail in the fucking coffin. Derek walks right up to him and punches him, and boy, does it connect. It is such a good hit that it’s loud, bone crunchingly loud, aggressive enough that Stiles jumps back in surprise, yelping. “Derek,” he says, but more likely than not, the Derek he knows has left the fucking building. Nothing he could say could get him to stop. 

Matt spits a wad of blood out onto the floor and stands up straight, and he smiles. Literally smiles, because he’s been waiting for a second chance at Derek since that night in WeHo. Matt laughs, this psychotic laugh, and then it’s just a mess. He hits Derek and that’s loud, too, both of them grabbing at each other and slamming into the walls, and people are noticing. There’s a fight in the hallway, and one of the first people to take note of that fact is Boyd.

He comes running in from the party, alarmed, eyes big in his head, and he takes one look at what’s going on. Derek and Matt, beating the hell out of each other, and then he looks away and focuses on Stiles. Before Stiles even knows what’s happening, Boyd is grabbing him and forcibly moving him away from the action – the grunting and the art on the wall falling to the ground and the back window shattering – wrapping his arms around Stiles’ middle and tugging him away. 

Stiles resists. He kicks his legs and fights it, saying, “he’s going to fucking kill Derek, don’t just leave him there,” but Boyd doesn’t care, and he’s a whole hell of a lot stronger and bigger than Stiles is, which is the point of him. He hauls Stiles up, off of his feet so Stiles can’t dig his heels in anymore, and starts carrying him out of the hallway, so Stiles can’t even see what’s going on anymore. He can only hear it, and it sounds bad. It sounds really, really bad. 

“I’m not in charge of Derek, I’m in charge of you,” he grunts, while Stiles fights with all his might to be let go. “Derek is going to be fine, you need to get away from that –“

“Let me go,” he demands, to no avail. He’s frantic, panting, kicking his legs in the air and hollering to be set free. 

He’s in the main room, where the music is cutting off, where people are standing around asking what’s going on, is everything okay, what’s going on with Stiles, where’s he taking Stiles. Scott comes running over with his brow furrowed, shaking his head like he doesn’t understand – then, he looks over Boyd’s shoulder and sees the fight, and his face goes slack with shock. He moves without thinking, running past, to go join in the effort of breaking them apart, or maybe even to help Derek beat the hell out of Matt. It’s not clear. Stiles doesn’t get to stick around to see any of it; as security runs past, as people murmur to each other about how crazy this is, Boyd carts him out of the bar, into the chilly night air, and dumps him onto the sidewalk. 

Police lights flash across their faces, but Stiles doesn’t care. He darts forward to try and skirt past Boyd to get back inside, to do something, but Boyd stops him. He holds Stiles against the wall with a hand on his chest and he gives Stiles a look. “Derek is fine,” he says. “He knows how to fight.” 

Stiles’ chin wobbles and he goes still. He knows Boyd is right. No one is going to die in there; maybe Derek will get hurt, yes, most likely, but no one is going to die. Stiles’ panic took over and convinced him someone was going to die tonight, and if it wasn’t going to be him, then Matt was going to see to it that it be the person Stiles likely cares about the most. He presses his head against the brick wall outside, as officers get out of their cars and head inside, their lights bright and blinding, their walkie-talkies murmuring as they pass. 

He presses his hands to his face and he feels the panic leave. The terror. The feeling like he was about to get his fucking neck snapped with Matt’s bare hands – and as soon as it’s gone, fully gone, it is replaced with sadness. He cries. Boyd stands with him and he stays close, but he offers no condolence, because what is there to say? 

Stiles had just clammed up in there, completely. He had gone catatonic, when presented with the sight of Matt again. He had done nothing. He had just stood there and let Matt touch him, when he swore up and down Matt would never get the chance to lay a finger on him again. He had let Matt get in his face, speak to him, say all those shitty things to him, and Stiles had just nodded along, survival instinct kicking in. 

He hates himself for that. He cries into his hands and he just fucking hates himself for that. 

Boyd clears his throat. “It was only a matter of time,” he says, voice low, succinct, and Stiles knows that he’s right. Of course it was only a matter of time before he came and pulled this kind of shit – it’s not impossible for someone like Matt to get close to him, especially not since they have a history. The doorman had his name on a list. Because Matt’s name is on lots of clearance lists for Stiles’ events. Because Stiles won’t say that he can’t be around him, and he won’t say why, because he’s been to pussy to do anything about any of this. 

Stiles pulls his hands off of face and he sets his jaw. He wipes the tears off of his cheeks and he grits his teeth, he crosses his arms over his chest, and he glares at the ground. Well, that’s it. That’s it. The only reason Derek is in there getting in a bar fight with the guy is because Stiles wouldn’t say anything. 

Then, that’s it. 

The double doors to the bar open and Stiles jumps, turning just in time to see Matt, bloodied and looking a whole hell of a lot worse for the wear, being led out of the bar in handcuffs, flanked by two officers. Stiles gapes and he and Matt meet eyes, briefly, so Stiles gets a pretty good look at the extent of his injuries. 

Blood. All Stiles sees is blood. 

“Where’s Derek?” He asks, to no one in particular. He watches them stuff Matt in to the back of a squad car and then he moves, like he’s going to go talk to them, but Boyd stops him with a big hand. “Where’s Derek?” He asks again, even as Boyd is holding him back from running headlong into the bar. 

His question gets answered anyway. The doors open again, and this time, it’s Derek who they’re bringing out. He’s not in handcuffs, which Stiles guesses is a good sign, but he’s still got officers all around him, and when Stiles moves to go and try to talk to him, one of them breaks off from the herd and puts a hand out, stopping Stiles dead in his tracks. 

Stiles cranes his neck to try and get a look at how hurt Derek is or isn’t. All he can see from this angle is that he’s rumpled, his purple shirt bloodied. 

“Hold on, Mr. Stilinski,” the officer says to him, and he’s chewing gum. He smacks it a couple of times, putting his hands on his belt, looking Stiles up and down, as though assessing for injuries. “I need to get your statement. Derek Hale says this Matt guy put his hands on you.”

Stiles blinks. “Uh –“

“He says he was defending you and things escalated from there.”

“Yeah, he…” Stiles clears his throat and shakes his head. “…he was threatening me. He pushed me, he –“

“He pushed you.” 

Stiles palms his face. 

“Derek Hale says this guy is a bit of an asshole,” he jerks his chin toward the car where they’ve got Matt locked into the back. “He says this guy has hit you before in the past. Is that true?” 

Stiles’ mouth goes dry and he breathes out, slow, through his nose. Likely, if Stiles doesn’t say that Derek had a very good reason to walk up and start punching the living daylights out of Matt, they’re going to wrap handcuffs around his wrists, too, and take him to fucking jail. Stiles will have to bail him out. He’ll have to go to court. It’ll be an entire thing. Derek hadn’t done anything wrong to deserve all that, so Stiles has to tell the truth. 

He straightens up and he says, “yeah.”

The officer nods his head, looking over his shoulder at where Derek is very animatedly giving his own account of events to another policeman. “So this is a whole can of worms, huh?” He seems to be muttering this mostly to himself, but Stiles nods his head all the same. He has no idea how much of a can of worms this night is going to wind up opening on the world. The officer sighs and turns back to look at Stiles, pulling a notepad out and shaking his head. “Let’s get your full statement of events, how about?” 

Stiles tells him exactly what happened. He tells him this was his birthday party slash tour ending party, and all his friends were here, and even some people he doesn’t know very well. He says he does not know how Matt got in, but that they used to date, for a long time, and likely, the security at the door let him in because they didn’t know any better. Matt probably has been stalking him for some time, keeping tabs on where he is, because he’s obsessive, because Stiles made him angry. 

He tells them that Matt used to hit him. That he was in an abusive relationship with him for a long time. Matt followed him to the bathroom and cornered him the second that Stiles was alone, and he threatened him and said terrible things to him and he pushed him, and Derek had come and reacted. 

“Is Derek going to get in trouble?” He asks when he’s done, nervously fiddling with the sleeve of his shirt. “Are they…is he going to be arrested?” 

“This whole thing is kind of a mess,” is his response, as he gives Stiles a bit of a critical once over. “Matt’s a pretty big guy. I never knew he….”

“I haven’t told anyone,” Stiles admits and he blinks, like he’s realizing the full extent of the situation. He looks over his shoulder at Derek, again, and then he looks back at Stiles. 

“This whole thing is a fucking mess,” he repeats, but he goes on. “Derek didn’t go easy on him, you know, there’s a lot of injuries, a lot Matt could press charges for.”

Of course Derek didn’t go easy on him. Stiles rubs at his eyes and shakes his head. 

“If it’s like you say, then it’s self-defense and we won’t move on him. What Matt wants to do is another story.” 

“How come Matt’s in handcuffs?”

“The guy’s an asshole,” the officer shrugs, and then he turns and walks away, leaving Stiles standing there with Boyd. Stiles watches Derek telling his own version of events, and from this angle, he can see more of Derek’s injuries. 

Truthfully, he does not look that bad. Or at least, he doesn’t look as bad as Matt looks. He’s got a bloody shirt, some blood dripping from his mouth, and he’s sort of messed up looking – but generally, he looks…fine. Matt had looked like a walking blood stain, and Derek is just fine. It’s a wonder how Derek is standing there free as a bird and Matt is locked up in the squad car; Stiles wonders if Matt had tried to hit any of the officers, or what transpired that led to him getting shoved back there. 

Stiles walks forward, as soon as they leave Derek leaning up against one of the squad cars flashing lights across all of their faces. Derek turns and sees him coming, blinking at him, and a small smile spreads across his face. 

When he’s close enough, Stiles stops. He crosses his arms over his chest and he just stands there, Boyd hovering over his shoulder. He isn’t sure where to start, or what to say. 

Derek asks, “you mad?”

“I don’t know,” he answers, honest, shaking his head and looking away. “That was…”

“You’re mad at me.”

“No, I’m not. I just, uh…” he stares at his feet. “…I thought he was going to kill me.”

“You know I wouldn’t let that happen,” he grins. His teeth are completely covered in blood, and he grins, shaking his head. “What’d I tell you? If I saw that guy again, I’d ruin his fucking day.” 

“You said you’d kill him, actually.”

Derek shushes him, pressing a finger to his lips. “Not in front of the police, Stiles.” 

“Did they say you’re in trouble?” 

Derek shrugs. “If Matt presses charges. But you know, he won’t. He’s a fucking little bitch.”

“Seems like you kinda had the upper hand in the whole….punching each other, thing.”

“Of course I did,” he shrugs, like it’s not a big deal, like he’d fight ten more guys if he had to, whatever. “The guy only knows how to suckerpunch people smaller than him.”

Stiles huffs a laugh. Maybe so. Maybe fucking so. “I just would hate for you to get into trouble, just because of me –“

Derek cuts him off. “Stiles,” he moves closer, and he’s smiling again. His bloody teeth. “…I am in love with you. I would hunt that guy to the ends of the earth and beat him a hundred thousand times, no matter the consequences. I don’t care if I get into trouble. I’ll do it again, and again, because I fucking love you. And I know that’s the worst god damn thing in the world to you, and I know you don’t want to hear it because you think you don’t deserve it, but it’s true.” He shrugs. “I’d go to jail for you without blinking. Come on. You know that.”

Stiles doesn’t know that. Or, what he means is, that Derek has made that sentiment crystal fucking clear to Stiles a hundred different times – like when Derek said he’d lick the floor Stiles walks on, that he’d sleep on the floor every night, that he loves fucking Stiles, he wants Stiles to come back home and meet his family – but Stiles has just never wanted to believe it. He just never thought it could be true, that Derek could really love him. Or that anyone could. 

Look at what he went through. Look at the guy who claimed to love him before. Can anyone blame him? 

He clears his throat. “I do want to hear it, actually,” he says, nodding his head. “I wanna hear it. I…I tried not to, but I feel the same. I mean, I love you, too.”

Derek sucks the blood off of his teeth, and Stiles hates that he finds it attractive. “You gonna write about it?” 

“Of course. It’s all I’m good at.” 

Another cop appears and says they have more questions for Derek, so Stiles gives them space and moves to stand by the garbage can on the sidewalk. Inside the bar, he can see some of his friends – Erica, Scott, some casual onlookers – also being asked questions about what happened. They all look a bit shellshocked, like they can’t believe that happened, it was crazy, the whole thing was nuts, and Stiles feels shitty, because it wouldn’t have had to happen, ruining their party, if only he had the balls to ever do anything about it. 

He remembers when he had asked himself – what would it take? What would finally be the final straw? What would be his breaking point? When would he finally say enough is enough? What would make him brave enough, to take that final leap off the cliff’s edge? 

His eyes flick to the car where he knows Matt is. He hesitates, and then he quickly squashes down the hesitation. He walks, shoulders bunched up, and approaches the cop who’s standing outside the car, watching Stiles approach. He points to the car and says, “can I speak to him?” 

He gets looked at, up and down. “All right,” he agrees, slowly. He pops open the back door and stays standing right there, hovering over Stiles and watching everything like a hawk.

Stiles squats down and he peers inside. Matt is sitting there, hands behind his back, bleeding profusely from his nose. They stare at one another, locking eyes, and Stiles frowns at him. He says, “I will never love you again. I never want to see you again. You make me fucking sick. You can’t control what I do, or what I say anymore, and I’ll write what I want about you.”

Matt swallows. “Don’t be so dramatic, Stiles.”

“You ruined my fucking life,” he ignores Matt and narrows his eyes. “‘Now, it’s my turn.” 

Matt’s got this look on his face, like he knows. He knows that Stiles can ruin him. He knows that Stiles has the power on him, and not the other way around, for once in his fucking life. And he looks scared. He looks like he’s about to watch his entire life go up in fucking flames. And Stiles smiles. He can’t help himself. 

He stands and the officer slams the door shut behind him. “This might be wildly inappropriate,” he starts, pulling a pad and a pen out, “but my daughter is nuts about you. Shes’ got tattoos of your shit and everything. Would you mind…?”

“Of course,” Stiles scribbles his signature across the pad quickly, dotting the i’s with stars.

**

Stiles shoves as much as he can into three duffle bags. Clothes, notebooks, all his most important worldly possessions, toothpaste, his tooth brush, body wash, all of it dumped into bags frantically, his hands shaking. He goes into the living room and collects things from there, shoving more and more in, piling his bags up at the door, and then he stops when he sees his piano, hovering in the corner.

His beloved piano. The one he wasn’t allowed to touch, for years. That can’t come with him. That’s okay. He can afford to buy another piano, wherever he winds up going. 

Boyd helps him with his bags down to the car, and people are down there, taking pictures. _Where are you going, Stiles? Hey Stiles, how’s it going? What happened in LA, Stiles? Where’s Derek Hale, Stiles?_

Stiles ignores them. He sits in the back and drives the mere thirty seconds it takes to get to Derek’s apartment building. He pauses before he gets out, hesitating with his hand on the door handle, taking in a deep breath. 

To Boyd, he says, “I think I’m just gonna go with Derek.”

Boyd blinks at him. “Oh.”

“I think I’m gonna just go with him, just him. You don’t have to come.”

“You’ll be all right…?”

“I’ll be with him, so it’s – it’s fine,” he nods. It’s time for Boyd to go and live his own life for a while, not being Stiles’ shadow. He and Erica deserve a vacation, deserve Hawaii and the beach and spending time together, no Stiles in sight, for as long as they can. Stiles has been asking too much of him for years, now. It hasn’t been fair. 

With that, Stiles opens his door, and Boyd follows him out. Up the steps, to where Derek’s own security is standing. They see him coming and sort of grimace, because the last time Stiles came face to face with Derek’s them, he caused a great big scene, and they got in trouble for it. 

But this time, Stiles just politely asks them to let him know that he’s here, and if Derek would let him in. 

Of course Derek does, and Stiles pounces on him the second they’re inside together, grabbing onto his hands, holding on tight. “I need to leave,” he says, no introduction, no nothing. “I need to get out of here, and I need you to come with me.”

“Leave?” Derek is stupefied. He holds Stiles’ hands back, but he shakes his head, confused. “Where?”

“I don’t know, away, just away, where no one knows I am, I just need to fucking disappear.” 

“Stiles, what’s –“

“I called Lydia and I told her I’m ready, now. I’m ready,” he nods his head, resolute, and Derek stares at him. “I’m ready, I want to be done. I told her I’m tired of it, of all the – of just fucking carrying this around, because it’s killing me, it’s killing me, and I want it done and over with. And I can’t be done with it, until…” he takes in a big, deep breath, his eyes watery. “…until I tell the truth. I told her to do what she needs to do with that video to – to make him pay. I wrote a statement. I told the police. It’s happening, I did it, and now I need to go, and I cannot go alone, I need you.”

Derek is stupefied for a moment, struggling to catch up. He still has a black eye, from the fight in the bar in LA, and he likely got his ass reemed by his agent and his publicist, because he hasn’t been in a fight in years and he’s supposed to be doing better, and they’re all printing stories about how Derek is unhinged and crazy again. These are all things that have happened because of Stiles. And if Derek said no, he doesn’t want to go, he won’t go with Stiles, then Stiles would understand. 

It would destroy him, really it would, but he would understand. 

Derek says, “where do you want to go?” 

Stiles palms his face. He says, “I don’t know. Just – away.”

“Vancouver?”

Holy shit, Vancouver. Holy shit. The water. Derek’s big house and all its security and gates and trees. The bedroom. The city. The green, green grass in Derek’s backyard. “Yes,” he says, nodding frantically, “I want to go there. I need to go there.”

Derek nods his head. “I’ll go with you. Just…let me pack.”

“Now,” he gestures, “five minutes ago. I have to be gone before…”

“I know,” he agrees. “I’ll be fast.”

Derek rustles around in his apartment, digging out a bag and filling it just like Stiles had done at his own place. Stiles walks to the windows and stares down, out, across New York City. He thought this place was such a dream, when he first moved in, as a twenty year old kid who was living the life he always wanted. It seems silly to love this place that much, now. It seems silly to love a lot of things that much, now. 

“You’re really just going to try and disappear?” Boyd asks him, and Stiles doesn’t even hesitate. 

“They’d pull me apart, otherwise. You know that.”

Boyd does know that. 

They are going to fucking rip him apart. And as long as he’s somewhere with Derek, where they can’t get to him, Stiles doesn’t even care. Let them say what they want. Stiles knows what happened to him. 

He lived it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rep era incoming


	8. Free At Last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a few things. First of all, I did not go into this thinking it would be close to 170,000 words long. Every time it kept getting longer I would just be quietly shocked like fucckkkk so it’s just never gonna end, huh... and frankly there are still things I didn’t get to. To be honest, I could for real write another 600,000 words about this shit. I don’t know what it is about it. I’m sad as shit I’m finished.
> 
> And the correlations between Stiles’ career and Taylor’s are freaky because they were COMPLETELY UNINTENTIONAL. It was one thing to be like haha, rep era. It was another thing to realize that holy shit, literally rep era LITERALLY rep era? Rep was literally her sixth album? Literally her last record before she dropped Big Machine? This was not done on purpose. I did not set out to write about Taylor but alternative universe her I swear on god it was an accident. I think what happened was, everything I have learned about the music industry I have learned against my will from following Taylor’s career. My mind just...did it. Lmfao. 
> 
> I’m glad so many of you despised Lydia because it was my intention to have you hate her, even though she genuinely never did anything that bad. Stiles saw her as trying to destroy his life because that was his mindset, and you all saw that through his eyes. I wish I could’ve spent another three chapters ironing out the rest of Stiles’ relationships, but fuck. It’s at 170k boys. Time to pack it up.

Stiles’ phone buzzes on the bedside table, and he can just make out the shape of Lydia’s name flashing at him in big white lettering. He had to crane his neck to see it – he reaches his hand out to grab it, much to Derek’s evident shock and chagrin. 

“You’re seriously going to answer that?” He’s hovering over Stiles’ body on the bed, arms on either side of Stiles’ torso, blinking at him, baffled. It’s not totally unfounded shock, considering that Stiles has not answered a single phone call in just about two weeks, now. And the thing has rang. 

It has rang, and rang, and texts have come in, and all of it has been ignored. It got so bad, Stiles let it just go dead after the fourth day of being at Derek’s house in Vancouver. He only charged it so he could play Temple Run one day when he was bored. He hasn’t looked at social media, he has not touched any single piece of the internet, he has not spoken to anyone else aside from Derek in ten entire days. No Boyd, no band, no fans, no one.   
Truth be told, he is petrified to know what he would find, right now, if he were to google his own name. 

Stiles picks the phone up and shows its face to Derek. He goes cross eyed to look at it, and then frowns. “You’re seriously going to answer that?” He repeats. 

“I swore on my mother’s grave that I would answer Lydia’s phone calls,” he says by way of explanation. 

Derek looks down, where both of them are naked, where his dick is hard and ready to enter Stiles’ body, and then looks at Stiles again. “You’re seriously going to –“

“My mother’s grave, Derek.”

He frowns, but he stays put and watches, as Stiles presses the phone to his ear and says hello. 

“It lives,” Lydia says to him in lieu of a greeting, and Stiles makes a face.

“It’s busy.”

“It is not busy,” she corrects. “Define busy. Busy meaning Derek Hale is inside of you right now?”

It’s eerie how accurate she is. Derek is close enough that he hears this, that he raises his eyebrows and smiles, sort of sarcastically. Derek hasn’t ever actually spoken to Lydia, aside from in passing, and Stiles hasn’t spent copious amounts of time describing her temperament to him. So he’s surprised to hear her say this, only because he does not know her well enough to know she’s crass and rude and will go on to say much more shocking things in Derek’s ear shot. 

“Almost,” Stiles tells her, making eye contact with Derek and smirking. “Is there a reason for this phone call or are you just making sure he doesn’t have me chained in his basement?” 

“Well,” she starts, so then Stiles knows there is, as a matter of fact, a reason for this phone call. The first one she’s given him since he told her he was getting the hell out of there, wasn’t coming back, not even to give a phone interview, nothing. “…Grammy nominations are out.”

Stiles hacks out a laugh. It is not a ha-ha funny laugh. It is a sarcastic, irritated laugh. “That’s seriously why you called me?”

“Yes.”

Derek leans down and kisses Stiles on his jaw, his neck, his collarbone, and Stiles does his level best to ignore it. “I could not give a rat’s ass less about –“

“I just thought maybe you’d like to at least hear the list.”

That gives him some pause. Just a single iota of pause, even as Derek is sucking on Stiles’ neck to campaign for his attention. “….it’s a list?”

“It’s a list,” she repeats back, and she sounds haughty. Because she knows that she’s piqued Stiles’ interest. 

Stiles gives Derek an apologetic look, but he pushes his free hand against Derek’s chest, and he keeps pushing until Derek takes the hint and climbs off of Stiles’ body. He sits down on the edge of the bed and rubs at his face, because two minutes ago they were about to fuck, and now, apparently, they are not. Stiles sits up, cross legged, and grabs one of Derek’s pillows to lay across his naked lap. For some reason, having this conversation with Lydia completely naked feels ludicrous, so he has to cover up. 

“Okay,” he says slowly, “I guess I can stand to hear it.” 

“Uh huh,” she clucks her tongue and then clears her throat. “It’s long.”

“Christ, can you just fucking tell me?” 

Derek presses his chin into his palm and sits there, staring at Stiles, waiting. 

“Well, first of all, Nate is up for producer of the year.”

Good for Nate. The guy is a genius, which is why Stiles had chosen him of all people he could’ve chosen to produce this particular record. He knew that Nate, and Nate alone, would be able to take the trauma-induced vomit that Stiles had written and actually make listenable songs out of it. 

“You’ve got best alt album,” she begins, sounding bored, “and all big three.”

Stiles blinks across Derek’s bedroom, where his clothes are strewn, his guitar is leaning up against the closet door, his shoes are piled up in a corner. “…all three?”

“Song, record, and album, yes.” 

“For fuck’s sake,” he palms his face and then shakes his head, sucking in a great big breath. “They’re only nominating me because they think I got beaten up, is that it?”

“First of all, you did get beaten up, and second of all, no. Believe it or not, in spite of your ire towards it, you made a good fucking album, Stiles.” 

Stiles has only been in this particular situation, with the big three, one other time in his life. It was his second album, when he was still all shiny and new and his talents were a lot more novel than they are today. He had won all three, and then some, and he can still call to mind the images of himself carrying all five of his awards in his arms with a great big grin on his face, because all his dreams had just come true. Beyond all his dreams. It was the greatest night of his life, at the time. 

Since then, he’s won here and there. He’s won song of the year, and record of the year, and best alternative album. Free At Last was an album that got nominated for album of the year but lost to someone else, in spite of often going down in history as his single greatest work to date. Before this one, at least. 

Because before this one, he hasn’t attained this kind of critically acclaimed success. People didn’t take him seriously, like he’s said before. He’s a hack. He writes about men who treat him badly and makes his millions off of running smear campaigns against them all, according to the general masses. In reality, all he does is experience life and then write about it, but then, when he puts it that way, it’s just not that interesting to people. 

Since running away, his moods have all been balancing on a hair pin. Sometimes he’s able to delude himself Vancouver with Derek is a fantasy, and they’re two normal people who are just shacking up together because they’re just that madly in love. Sometimes he isn’t, so he spends the day depressed, miserable, snapping at Derek and then feeling like a giant piece of shit for it, because Derek never does anything to deserve it. Other times, he experiences the full spectrum. Today is turning out to be one of those days.

“I don’t want it,” he says to her, very suddenly angry. “I don’t want to think it’s good. It’s the fucking stain on my entire god damn life.”

“Christ,” Lydia huffs, because she is not very well equipped to deal with Stiles’ psychosis. “Well, other people think so. You made something good, and you’re being rewarded for it, and you’re mad about it.” 

Stiles laughs. Again, not a funny laugh. “They just fucking feel bad they’ve all spent so long saying what a useless drunk asshole I am, so they’re throwing me a bone.” 

“No,” she reiterates, more forcefully. “It’s a work of fucking art. And you know what?” He can imagine her leaning forward in her swivel chair, in her Los Angeles office, “you’re probably going to win. All of it.” 

Stiles sees where this is going. He punches the pillow in his lap once or twice, just to get his frustration out, while Derek sits and watches this entire thing, no comment, no facial expression, just listening. “You want me to fucking go, holy shit.”

“The album you made is going to win six god damn Grammy’s, Stiles, you might consider it.” 

“You want me to fucking go,” he is laughing some more, raising his eyes to the ceiling, shaking his head incredulously. “Here I am, this fucking walking open wound, barely getting out of bed every morning, petrified of the outside world, and you want me to put on a god damn outfit and brush my hair and go to this fucking thing to be the world’s laughing stock again.” 

“Yes,” she spits. “That is exactly what I want. What are you planning to do? Stay shacked up with Derek Hale for the rest of your life?” 

“Yup!”

“Derek has a job too, you know, he can’t just –“

“I know that,” he barks, while Derek himself is still emotionless and still, likely because he doesn’t want to pile on anymore than Lydia already is. “I fucking know that! I just wanted a god damn – a fucking – year! Six months! Not, going to the god damn Grammy’s in two months!” 

“I think two months is more than enough time to spend wallowing in your own self pity.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“Stiles. Think about it. Okay? You could win album of the year again. Two times, Stiles. People don’t do that often, or ever. It’s a fucking honor.”

Stiles knows that it’s a fucking honor. He knows that it’s a dream come fucking true. He knows that it will put him on an elite list of legends, those who have come before him, and he knows it will set him apart from the rest of his peers. This is the sort of thing most artists only ever dream about, and here he is, pissing all over it, because of the way he got to this point. 

It isn’t his fault, that this great honor is being bestowed upon him, and all he can think to do is run away from it. It is entirely and completely Matt’s fault. Stiles has been teaching himself to think this, to know it, again and again. When he wakes Derek up in the middle of the night because he’s had another nightmare, he has learned to not blame himself or feel guilty for it. When he physically can’t restrain himself from drinking, he has learned to not blame himself. When he has flashbacks, when he can’t sleep at night, when he stands outside well into the night smoking, and smoking, and smoking, he does not blame himself anymore. 

It’s hard work. He does his best. 

Through grit teeth he says, “fine. I’ll think about it.” 

“You’ve got two weeks to think about it, so think fast.”

He sighs and stares at the floor, pursing his lips together. “Have you asked them about –“

“I have,” she cuts him off, and she sounds uncomfortable already, and so Stiles knows she does not have good news. “…they’re willing to push back the deadline for the next record. If you agree to sign on for another six.”

This is not a surprise. It’s not a surprise at all, that the label would only give him any grieving time, any time to recover whatsoever, on the contingency that he sign away his free will for another twelve fucking years. And the unspoken on the other end of it, is that if he drops this next album and then refuses to sign on for the next twelve years, they will gather up his previous albums and make off with them, lock them in a safe, and refuse to give them back unless he barfs up hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars. Even then, they could just simply choose not to sell them back to him, no matter how much money he offered them. 

Fine print is a bitch. Stiles was a kid, he didn’t know any better, but he hates his naïveté, for the fucking hell it’s gotten him into, now. 

Other labels would bend over backwards to get him signed on. Other labels would let him have more agency. Other labels would do anything he asked if it meant he’d sign the contract. Unfortunately for him, he’s indebted to these fucks, and they know it, and they don’t care that he’s in pain. They’re using that pain for their own ends. 

No, it’s not surprising. But it hurts more than he’d care to admit. These are people who he used to rely on, who he thought had his best interests at heart, who he thought gave a shit about about him. They don’t. He is a cash cow to them, always has been, always will be. A puppet they force to do their bidding to get another million or two, no matter the cost to Stiles’ well being. 

“Okay,” he croaks, because there’s nothing to fight about. No use in getting angry or upset, or any of it. It is what it is. He’d rather die than be stuck with these people for another twelve years, he knows he couldn’t do it, so then that means he’s going to write the next record, and then he’s going to walk, and they’re going to be horrible about it. There’s no other option. 

Lydia sighs. “I’m…sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he says, even though it isn’t. “I’ll think about the Grammy’s.” 

“What are you doing out there, Stiles? What are you spending your time doing with him?”

“Oh, just –“ he looks over and meets Derek’s eyes, where he’s sitting looking very pensive and serious on the edge of the bed. “…hanging out, mostly.” 

She makes a sound like she doesn’t care to know any more than that, because she figures it’s mostly sex. It’s partly sex, but definitely not all sex. 

“Just call me when you make a decision,” and with that, she hangs up, not another word. Stiles would expect nothing more and nothing less from her. She’s not a very warm person, after all, so it doesn’t hurt Stiles’ feelings that she doesn’t want to sit on the phone gabbing for hours on end about what a dreamboat Derek Hale is. 

He puts the phone down on the pillow in his lap and sucks in a great big breath, and then he lets it out, slow, like he’s a balloon, deflating himself. Derek shifts a bit in his place, turning his full attention onto Stiles, a thin smile on his face. He says, “album of the year, huh?”

Stiles nods, then he shrugs, like it’s no big deal. It’s the biggest deal in the world. It’s the highest award possible, for music. It’s everything. “They just feel sorry for me.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” he offers, voice soft, because he can fully tell that Stiles is about three steps away from having another one of his episodes. “You think you’re going to…?”

“I don’t know,” he says, honestly. It would be absolutely insane for him to not want to go when he’s up for that many, and it would also be absolutely insane for him to go. He cannot decide which is crazier, stupider, more detrimental to his mental health. “I don’t know, Derek.”

Derek looks away for a moment. He’s frowning and furrowing his brow, which Stiles has learned to identify as his thoughtful expression, his serious pensive expression. When he looks back, he’s still frowning. “They won’t let you take a break?”

“Not unless I sign for six more albums.”

“Jesus, an ultimatum?” He’s quietly shocked by this information, shaking his head as though he sincerely cannot believe it. “After all this shit you went through, an ultimatum?” 

“It’s not surprising.”

But Derek is surprised. He seems to be completely unwilling to believe that there are people who have Stiles under their thumb this tightly, and also unwilling to believe that there are people who could truly be that awful. There are. Stiles shrugs his shoulders again, even as he feels his face scrunch up, even as the tears come, unbidden, unwelcome. His fifteenth mental breakdown since he came to Vancouver, and Derek doesn’t even hardly blink.

He comes fully onto the bed. He pulls the pillow and the phone out of Stiles’ hands and tosses them aside, while Stiles cries and sniffles and swipes at his eyes viciously, as if he could rub his tears away, stop the feelings altogether. Derek pulls Stiles up against his chest and holds him, rubbing circles on his back, silent. There really aren’t very many things that Derek can say to make Stiles feel better, after all. 

He’s learned, that sometimes all Stiles ever really needs is someone to give a shit about him. It’s enough, to have someone care about the fact that he’s sad, to try even a little bit to make him feel better. 

He cries for a while, and then he just sniffles, and then he’s calm. He hugs Derek tight and melts into him, because Derek is a great big teddy bear that he’s attached to, and he makes Stiles feel like the entire world isn’t a total shitshow. 

Derek clears his throat and says, “you wanna see something that might cheer you up?”

Stiles nods silently against his chest. 

Derek sits up and grabs at his own phone, pulling it into his hands, then lying back down next to Stiles. He says, “the trailer is out.”

Stiles gasps. “For…?”

“For Quiet Houses.”

That makes Stiles sit up all the way. He rubs at what wet is left on his face, and he motions for Derek to give him the phone, already. Derek smiles, like he knew Stiles would be interested, as he slowly sits up, and then hands Stiles the phone. It’s on YouTube, the video already loaded up and paused, so all Stiles has to do is press play. He hesitates, biting on his finger in excitement – not only is this his favorite book being made into a movie, but his fucking boyfriend is in it. He could literally explode right now. 

He presses play, and he watches. He gasps and points with a big grin at the first shot of Derek, and Derek nods and smiles, watching over Stiles’ shoulder. It goes on pretty much like how Stiles would expect it to. He has, after all, read this book only a dozen times, so he’s pretty much memorized it. It seems they’re keeping it as true to the book as possible, and it’s funny, that Stiles never imagined Derek Hale as his favorite character, before.

Because now that he’s sitting here catching a glimpse of him as that character, he wonders why it never occurred to him before. It’s a perfect cast. 

The trailer ends with its release date, and Stiles bounces up and down on the bed, leaning over to give Derek a big kiss on the mouth. “It looks so good, holy shit, holy shit. And to think, I’m fucking that guy. Wow. And I fucked the other guy!” 

“All right,” Derek snorts, pulling the phone out of Stiles’ hand. 

“Oscars, Golden Globes, Emmy’s, Tony’s, you’re going to fucking EGOT for this shit.”

“Right,” Derek smirks. “I’m going to win a Grammy and a Tony for a part I played in a movie with absolutely no musical numbers.” 

“Why not? It looks amazing. I can’t believe I’m in bed with a future Oscar nominee.” 

Derek puts his phone aside, and then he’s quiet for a moment. He’s got his pensive face on again, rubbing at his jaw and staring at the bed for a moment. When he looks up to meet Stiles’ eyes, he’s serious. “You think you still want to come to the premiere? It’s in just a few months, so I wasn’t sure if…”

Stiles puts his hand on Derek’s chest, and he shakes his head. “Derek. There is nothing on earth that could stop me from going to that with you. Of course I’m still going, Derek, of course I am.” 

“Okay,” Derek seems quietly relieved by this, a slow smile spreading across his face. 

“You’re going to fucking EGOT. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“I’m not going to EGOT,” he rolls his eyes. “Between the two of us, you’re the one who’s more likely to EGOT.”

“Oh, but I can’t act. They’ll never give me an Oscar. Or, maybe they will, if I get people to feel sorry enough for me.”

“Well, I cant sing, and they’ll never give me a Grammy. Looks like neither of us can EGOT.” 

Stiles smiles at him and shrugs his shoulders. “But you’re going to EGOT in here,” he points to his chest, where his heart is, and Derek rolls his eyes again.

**

Stiles waits until Derek is absorbed in a barbecue competition show, set up on the couch with a bowl of chips and dip in front of him and a beer in his hand. There are two really good ways to distract Derek, Stiles has learned. The first is, of course, sex, and the second is food. Give Derek a sandwich and you’ve bought yourself ten minutes to do whatever it is Derek would not approve of you doing.

He brings the chips in and sets them down on the coffee table, so Derek perks up and immediately grabs a fistful of them, dipping four of them at once into the ranch, shoveling them towards his mouth. “Thanks, baby,” he says, and then Stiles hands him an opened beer. Derek thanks him again, and then gestures to the television to point out that they’re about to start smoking the wings on the show. Stiles nods as though he’s interested. 

He is not interested. Derek is obsessed with shows like Diners, Drive-In’s and Dives because he has a fetish for watching people eat. He loves to sit and stare at a piece of meat cooking because it makes his dick hard, or something – Stiles’ interest in food is survival driven alone, so this is a particular fascination of Derek’s that Stiles just does not get. 

“I’m gonna run to the restroom really quick,” he points his thumb backwards, down the hall, where the bathroom is all the way on the other side of the house. 

Derek swallows what he has in his mouth and says, “want me to pause?” 

“Uh, no,” he snorts, gesturing to the food and the show. “Just eat and watch, I’ll be right back.” 

Derek is also completely guileless. He has no idea he’s been set up like a baby and a mobile, given distractions just to give Stiles some time to do the number one thing he knows Derek would not approve of Stiles doing. 

He turns and heads down the hall, while Snowball’s eyes track him obsessively, as though he’s stalking prey in the wild. He gets to the bathroom, closes the door behind him, and then he closes the lid on the toilet and sits on top of it, pulling his phone out of his pocket and biting his lip. 

Frantically, because he’s got this feeling like he’s doing something he really shouldn’t be (because he is), he pulls up his safari and then stares at it. The little text bar blinks and blinks at him, asking him to type in a search or a web address, and Stiles stares. 

He glances at the closed bathroom door one more time, as though he thinks Derek will be able to see through walls, or somehow psychically know what Stiles is up to in here. It was Stiles’ idea that he not go looking for things to upset him, but Derek is like Stiles’ fucking jailer, with the way he enforces that rule. One time Derek walked in and caught Stiles about to open Twitter and he slapped the phone clean out of Stiles’ hands. 

Derek is of the opinion that nothing good could possibly come from Stiles searching his own name. He is probably right. But Derek does not realize just how far Stiles’ self-destructive tendencies can go. 

He types in Matt’s name and watches as several search suggestions pop up underneath. _Matt Harding Stiles Stilinski, Matt Harding fired, Matt Harding arrested, Matt Harding Derek Hale_. This alone should be warning enough, to make Stiles shut his phone off and go back in the living to watch barbecue shows with Derek – after all, it is Stiles’ rule. And it’s been his rule for a reason. 

But Stiles is going insane. Not knowing where Matt is right now. If he’s out walking the streets or if he’s being sued or stripped of his contract or if everything is the same, because no one cares what happens to Stiles Stilinski so long as it entertains them. 

His heart is hammering in his chest, but he searches. The articles come up lightning fast, so before Stiles even has a chance to decide what to read and what not to read, he’s already seen it all. One sticks out to him – the article’s thumb nail is a picture of himself and Matt somewhere in New York, holding hands. He clicks it, without thinking twice. 

Blown up, the picture is bad. Stiles is frowning, sunglasses on, posture stiff, and it’s evident he’s not holding Matt’s hand – Matt is holding his hand, and not the other way around. Stiles’ hand hangs limp in his, like he barely wants to touch Matt at all. 

The headline reads, _Matt Harding released by the Yankees, suspended indefinitely by the MLB following Stiles Stilinski controversy_. 

Stiles reads that over and over again. He puts his hand over his mouth and closes his eyes, breathing in, and out. Okay. So they kicked him out. It’s a controversy, meaning apparently some people don’t agree with that decision, but it’s what they decided. People believe Stiles’ word. Some people, at least. Okay. 

But Stiles knows, that if it weren’t for that elevator footage, if there weren’t black and white proof, they’d never have believed him. Never. 

He goes to another article, entitled, _Following the Timeline of Matt Harding and Stiles Stilinski_. It’s a buzzfeed article. That, coupled with the title, should be enough for Stiles to think twice about clicking on it – but all the same, he does. He immediately regrets it, but he keeps reading all the same. 

There are pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. The first one is from when he and Matt basically first met, first started going out – Stiles at a baseball game, in a Yankees hat, right by the dugout, sitting with a big grin on his face next to Scott. It’s the weirdest thing Stiles can honestly say he’s ever seen, even though he remembers the day, and he remembers having been there. 

In the picture, he looks like a different person. His smile is relaxed and natural, he’s not so thin, he’s drinking a beer for the fun of it, not to get so shitfaced he can’t remember where he is. Stiles stares at it for a long time, and it makes him so sad he wants to stick his head into the sink and pour steaming hot water over himself. 

He misses it. Being that person. He wishes he could leap into the photo like the ghost of Christmas Future, grab himself by the shoulders and shake that stupid kid and tell him to run, run as fast as you can, get out of here. But he can’t. He looks at himself and wants to cry, but he can’t do anything to help that kid. He’s just going to have to go through it. 

The next one is of him and Matt out in New York, still early in the relationship, Stiles still looking happy. Holding hands and smiling at each other and basking in the glow of the cameras flashing. The next, a bit later. Stiles in long sleeves, the summer sun blaring down on him, but he still smiles and he still leans up against Matt, reliant on him. 

The next, Stiles is in deep. He’s got on all black, like he was on his way to his own funeral. He’s miserable, it’s obvious. He’s got a bruise on his face that’s emphasized by the flash of the cameras. Matt grips his wrist hard, hard enough his fingers go white where he’s holding on. 

Stiles is just scrolling down to get to the next one when the bathroom door bursts open. He fumbles his phone, so it falls face down onto the tiles underfoot, and gapes when he sees Derek peering in at him, a wry smile on his face. He looks at the scene in front of him. 

Stiles, teary eyed, hiding in the bathroom. The phone, the evidence and incrimination of Stiles’ wrong doing. He blinks, and then looks at Stiles’ face. “What are you doing in here?” 

Stiles swallows. He shakes his head. “Uh – using the bathroom.” 

Derek steps in all the way, and he puts his hands in his pockets. “You googled, huh?” 

Stiles’ lower lip wobbles. He does not want to cry in front of Derek, because it’s like it’s all he’s fucking done these past couple of weeks here with Derek is fucking cry his eyes out and make a fool out of himself. And Derek has been so patient and understanding and forgiving, of everything, even the things Stiles does not deserve to be forgiven for. Like when he drank all of Derek’s fancy wine and then puked it in the back yard. Or when he accidentally stepped on Snowball’s paw and he yipped and cried and Stiles felt fucking awful over it. Or when he dragged Derek out here to begin with, to trap Derek in his pool of misery. 

Derek sighs, and he squats down, so he and Stiles are about at eye level. He picks up Stiles’ phone and brings it back to life, so there’s a picture of Stiles looking miserable with Matt at his side, staring right back at him. He looks at it for a moment, and then he looks at Stiles. “You okay?” 

Stiles swipes at his eyes. “They suspended him,” he says. And Derek nods, like he knew that already. 

“I’ve been keeping tabs.” 

Stiles had not known this. Derek offers up this information readily and honestly, like he wasn’t hiding it, but he was. Or, maybe, Stiles just hadn’t asked. Or Stiles just didn’t want to know. “You’ve been –“ 

“Well, I just wanted to know what was going on. I wanted to make sure….because you didn’t press charges or anything.” 

Stiles swallows. “I didn’t want to.” 

“You didn’t even sue him.” 

“I didn’t want to,” he repeats, more forceful. “What good is that going to do? I don’t want his fucking money, I have my own.” 

Derek pinches the bridge of his nose, as though Stiles is being difficult. “I just meant that I wasn’t sure anything was even going to happen to him, because you just dumped the video and left.” 

“And I wrote my statement,” he reminds Derek, who nods. 

“I just wanted to –“ he pauses, looking away, and his jaw is working. It twitches, like he’s angry, like there is a lot he’s holding himself back from saying in this moment. “…I just had to make sure he got something. After what he did to you, he should be locked in a basement somewhere, but fired is good, too.” 

Fired is nothing, in the grand scheme of things. They cut off his enormous money funnel yes, but the guy is still a millionaire. Several times over. Disgraced he may be, but money can buy a free man an entirely new life. Like none of it even happened. 

Stiles knows this. But he’s tired. He’s not going to fight. He’s not going to drag this out in a courtroom. He’s not going to put himself through that. It is self-destructive to even consider it. 

It’s enough of a circus already. Fired is good enough. 

Stiles plays with a loose thread on his jeans, to avoid Derek’s eye contact. “Have you read what they’re saying about me?” He queries, nervously. 

“Mostly, it’s just people picking apart The Standing Dead looking for references to the abuse. Or going through the pictures of when you were with him,” he waves Stiles’ phone in the air, because Stiles was just looking at one such an article. “It’s not….all terrible.” 

He keeps his eyes down. “But it’s some terrible.” 

Derek nods. “You knew it would be,” he says in a gentle voice, before straightening up to his full height. He reaches his hand out, for Stiles to take. “C’mon. You’ve seen enough, I think.” 

Stiles nods. He has definitely seen enough. More than he ever needed to.

**

Derek had insisted, over and over again, that Stiles was more than welcome to cancel on going to his house for Christmas to meet Derek’s family. Things were different now, and Stiles was working through his issues and making valiant efforts to not be a humongous piece of shit, and it was hard fucking work, and the entire world was talking about him and what happened to him, and his family was reading it all, every single day. Derek said, _seriously, you don’t have to go, in fact, maybe you shouldn’t._

Stiles had entertained the thought of not going. He thought about just going to his dad’s house and doing Christmas with Melissa and Scott and then calling it quits, to go up to his kid bedroom and hide under the covers, like he was ten years old again. But the thought was so fucking depressing it brought the urge to drink on stronger than ever, so he had said he was going. 

It is maybe a bad idea. In fact, it certainly is. But after Christmas Eve brunch at his father’s house, where Snowball was released into the yard to chase birds and Melissa was flustered by Derek to the point where she could barely speak, Stiles gets into Derek’s car to drive about twenty-five miles West, where Derek’s mother lives. 

Derek turns the car on, then lets it idle. He says, for only the ten thousandth time, “you really do not have to come.” 

“They’re expecting me.” 

“But if I came and you weren’t there, they would understand.” 

“I should go,” he insists, nodding his head with finality. He should go. Derek has put up with Stiles’ nonsense for weeks on end, and he really wants Stiles to go. He’s not going to say that, because then that would put pressure on Stiles – but Stiles can absolutely tell. He wants to bring Stiles home for Christmas. Because it’s the kind of guy that Derek is. 

Derek stares at him for another moment, as though assessing him for some sign of a head injury. Then, he nods and puts the car in drive, leaving Stiles’ house behind. Snowball is in the backseat, pacing around and glaring out the window with his tongue hanging out. He pants in Stiles’ ear, barks at other dogs he sees until Derek yells at him to shut up, but he calms down once they’re on the highway. 

Stiles chews on his thumb and stares at the foliage out the window. It’s foggy today. There are lots of trees. It’s overcast and gloomy. He cannot keep his leg from bouncing, bouncing, bouncing. 

“You’re nervous,” Derek comments, after fifteen minutes of silence. 

Stiles swallows the lump in his throat. “I’m meeting your family, so yes, I’m nervous. It’s normal to be nervous. They very well might decide I’m horrible, if they haven’t already. I’m not great at this. I’m not, like, a bring me home to mom type of guy.” 

“Where are you getting this idea that you’re a brooding bad boy from?” 

“Brooding bad boy, maybe not,” he frowns out the window, “shitty alcoholic gremlin, yes.” 

“You are not a gremlin, Stiles,” but he snorts as he says it, because he has likely never used the word gremlin in this context before. 

Stiles turns in his seat, as much as he can against the seatbelt, and faces Derek. For his part, Derek keeps his eyes on the road, but he’s smirking. Like this is funny to him. Everything is always fucking funny to Derek. “They’ve read all this shit about me –“ 

“Oh, like what? You’ve fucked a lot of guys? It’s not front page news. It’s all you write about.” 

Stiles gapes, offended. “That I’m a drunk.” 

“They don’t think that. They think you’re a rockstar.” 

“Wee-woo, so glamorous,” he rolls his eyes to the back of his head. 

“Where is this coming from?” He sounds genuinely baffled, which only makes _Stiles_ fucking baffled – how can he genuinely have no fucking idea why Stiles might be nervous about going to this fucking thing? 

“You of all people should know how impossible it is to try to make a good first impression on people who have already gotten six hundred impressions of you from the shit people print about you,” he huffs, crossing his arms over his chest. “All anyone ever says about me anymore is that I’m a maneating alcoholic with no real talent and the cherry on top is that, also, I got beat up for a while. That’s what they think of me.” 

Derek is taking the exit off the highway marked with the name of his hometown, the one that Stiles has seen in Derek’s Wikipedia article, and Stiles sinks lower into his seat. “I do know how impossible that is,” he agrees, slowing at a red light. “So do they. It’s not true that you’re a maneating alcoholic with no real talent. Kinda like it’s not true that I’m a psychopathic dickbag,” he raises his eyebrow at Stiles. “They sort of get that not everything that’s printed is the gospel truth, Stiles. They’re related to me, for God’s sake.” 

Derek does have a point, there. Him being a megalomaniacal dick wasn’t always the worst thing they printed - there’s a reason it was so easy for Stiles to see all the previous relationships that Derek has had and what people thought about them. Stiles never realized it, not up until this moment, but Derek and Stiles have that in common. Their relationships are always under a microscope, because so many of them have gone up in flames, and people love to eat that shit up. His family has likely stumbled upon dozens upon dozens of articles about Derek’s trysts and flings and what have you. They’ve probably learned not to take them too seriously. 

Maybe they’ve learned not to take what people say about Stiles too seriously, either. 

Instead of winding up in a wealthy gated community or on a road filled with mansions as far as the eye can see, Derek takes them down a residential street that looks like anywhere else in America. Dogs running in yards, kids riding bikes even in the winter chill, and gallons and gallons of Christmas lights and waving Santas. 

Stiles is even more surprised when they pull into a long driveway that leads to a regular looking house. He had figured that maybe Derek grew up pretty average in terms of how much money his family had, but that after becoming rich and famous he would’ve bought his mother a new house. But this is without a doubt the same house that Derek grew up in - it’s not tiny, because eight kids were raised here, but it is no mansion. Not by a long shot. It’s barely bigger than the house Stiles grew up in. It’s maybe had a face lift or two thanks to Derek’s wealth, but it’s got a very well loved and well lived in appearance – the paint is chipping around the windows, the porch swing is squeaking in the slight breeze, and the mailbox emblazoned with HALE in dark red lettering is tilted like a single gust of wind would blow it clean over. 

Stiles blinks at it. There are nice cars in the driveway because Stiles was not kidding – Derek buys his sister’s cars like other people buy their siblings sweaters. There’s a half dozen of them, all lined up, and Derek slows to a stop behind the last one. He sets the car in park and then shuts it off, pulling the keys out and setting them down in his lap as he gives Stiles a bit of a once over. Stiles is still terribly nervous, and Derek can still tell. He says, “at least most of them will be too starstruck to do anything but stare at you, right?” 

Stiles watches as one of the curtains in the windows shifts, like someone is peeking out at them. He frowns. “That does not make me feel better.”

Derek smiles at him, because he seems to find Stiles’ proclivity to melancholy and general anxieties to be more endearing than he should. “They’re going to think you’re great, because I think you’re great. Trust me.” Snowball yips, because he demands to be set free, exhausted of the car ride. Derek gestures to him and says, “he agrees.” 

“He thinks his own tail is his enemy, so,” Stiles unbuckles his seatbelt anyway, taking in one last deep breath as Derek climbs out and moves to the back of the car to pull Stiles’ bag out. Derek lets Snowball out, and the second the door is open, he leaps out of the car and makes a break for it. He runs and runs, around the house to the backyard, likely to sprint around in a great big circle until he tires himself out. 

Stiles steps out. He puts his sunglasses on, because it’s a knee jerk habit he has, whenever he’s feeling anxious, to cover his face up as much as he can. Then he stands, watching Derek sling Stiles’ backpack over his shoulders, scratching at the back of his neck, feeling like he’s perhaps made a grave error in coming here to begin with. 

In spite of that entire conversation he and Derek had just had, about how Stiles should not give a shit what his family has or hasn’t heard about him, there is one particular subject that Derek hadn’t wanted to touch with a ten foot pole. It’s the elephant in the room, and it’s going to be the elephant in the room the second Stiles sets foot in Derek’s family’s living room. They’re all going to be thinking about it, staring at him and trying to see evidence of it, watching his every move as if to catalogue which mannerisms of his are likely leftover from the traumas he’s endured. 

He knows that Derek has talked to them about it. He overheard several hushed, whispered phone conversations when Derek thought that Stiles was asleep. Likely his mother or one of his sisters asking if it was true, if it’s real, if it really happened, _holy shit, really?_ There was another one in Stiles’ dad’s bathroom just this morning, where Derek excused himself the second his phone buzzed with his mother’s name flashing on the screen. Stiles had pressed his ear to the door to try and hear as much as he could, but he didn’t really need to hear much of it, anyway. He knows that Derek had explicitly told them all to not mention it. To not bring it up. To not ask him about it. To act like it doesn’t exist. That would be the best course of action. 

But, really, it doesn’t matter whether or not they bring it up. It will be there, hovering in the air, and Stiles sets his jaw and scuffs his feet on the driveway underfoot. It is horrible to be seen. Stiles has made his money off of being a bit transparent and honest, yes, but there is a limit. Stiles is honest and transparent in writing, where he can hide behind metaphors and big choruses and unnecessary guitar solos and instrumental breaks. People think that makes him an open book. They force him to be an open book. They give him no choice, peeking in at every corner of his life that they can get their hands on. 

This is just the worst corner. The darkest one. Full of cob webs and spiders and dead bodies, all of them his own. He never wanted it out there, because he didn’t want to be seen for what he really is. Now it’s out there. They all see. It’s horrible, _horrible_ , to be seen. 

Derek rounds the corner of the car and sees Stiles is standing there, with his fucking sunglasses on, and he makes a face. He reaches out and rips them off of Stiles’ head, tucking them back into Stiles’ front pocket, because he’s figured out Stiles uses them to hide. “You’ve got nothing to worry about,” he reiterates for only the hundredth time, and then he takes Stiles by his arm with one hand, pulling him forward. “Everyone is going to treat you like royalty. Seriously.”

They’re approaching the front door. It’s big and red, with a brass knob, and Stiles wants to run right up to it and shove his head into it as hard as he can, to knock himself out cold. 

“If anyone says anything to you that makes you uncomfortable, I’ll kick them out.”

Stiles doesn’t doubt that for a second, but it does not make him feel better. He can only imagine, truly can only begin to fucking imagine, what sorts of things these people could come up with that would make Stiles uncomfortable. The list is endless. 

Derek walks up the steps and drags Stiles with him the entire way, until they’re right at the front door, hovering. Derek turns and looks Stiles in the face, a sardonic smile on his own. “Your hair looks nice.”

“Oh, fuck off,” he grumbles. He had spent a solid hour in front of the mirror after breakfast making it look perfectly tousled, styled just right, and Derek knows that. He’s just buttering Stiles up. 

“I mean it,” he argues, big smile on. “You look like the old you.”

The old Stiles. Like the one from those pictures, before Matt ever laid a hand on him. Huge smile, perfectly styled hair like he was always walking off a photoshoot, neat clothes, no secrets, nothing to hide. It makes him feel good to hear that he looks like that again, so he blushes and looks away, to the door, where his fate awaits him. 

“Ready?” Derek asks.

“No.”

“All right,” they stand there for another ten seconds, listening to the birds chirp, Snowball going bonkers in the back yard, and then Derek asks again. “How about now?”

There’s no use in prolonging the inevitable. It’s like ripping a band-aid off. The first twenty minutes are going to be the worst, and then it’ll get better, so he’s just gotta go in there and get the first twenty minutes over with. Christ, you’d think he were going to his own execution, not a god damn home cooked meal. “Okay,” he agrees, and Derek pushes the door open. 

Inside, it’s warm. It smells like Christmas, because there are candles lit on half the available surfaces that Stiles can see, and there’s a gigantic tree reeking of pine sitting in the corner of the living room, glowing and glittering with a sea of presents underneath it. It is not a fancy house, but it’s very homey. The couches look well loved and there are blankets slung over the back, miles upon miles of pictures of the kids as they grew up covering every free surface of the walls. The staircase is lined with fake pine branches, more twinkling lights, and it’s a bit overwhelming at first – like Stiles’ eyeballs can’t take it all in at once. It’s like Christmas threw up in here. 

Derek has still got Stiles’ backpack, with his change of clothes and toothbrush tucked inside of it, on his back, but he guides Stiles forward, toward the end of the hall, where there are lots of voices. Stiles panics, privately, in his own head. He doesn’t try to dig his heels in or put his sunglasses back on or even try to make a break for it, but he fucking panics. He imagines, as he walks down the hall with its creaky wooden floors and even more pictures of the Hale children leering out at him, that he’s going to walk in and they’re all going to just stop and stare at him, like he doesn’t belong here. Or they’re going to be awkward around him, because they don’t know how to treat him, or what to say to him, because they all feel sorry for him. 

Or, worse, they all think he deserved it. 

Derek pushes Stiles ahead, until they’re standing in a big arch way. It’s this tiny little hallway of space between a dining room with a fully set table and candles lit and more Christmas decorations than Stiles knows what to do with, and the kitchen. It’s a big kitchen, it must be, because it’s stuffed full of people. Women, mostly. 

They round the corner and step where everyone can see them, and all hell breaks loose. Immediately. A glass of wine gets knocked over in the calamity, a collective gasp and then everyone talking at once, everyone turning to look and seeing Derek and Stiles standing there. It’s like the king and queen have just walked in. That’s how they act. 

There are so many of them it’s overwhelming. They all have dark hair and they’re all tall, even the ones who are shorter, and they greet Derek and Stiles like they’ve returned home from fucking war. Big smiles, lots of hello’s, all at once, so Stiles isn’t sure who he’s even supposed to look at. 

Talia emerges from the fray. She’s got a bruschetta in her hand, but she shoves the entire thing into her mouth in one go as he approaches them, chewing it ferociously like she wants to get it down her gullet as fast as possible, so she can talk to them. She goes to Derek first and wishes him a merry Christmas and plants a big red kiss on his cheek, and then she sets her eyes on Stiles.

She walks right in front of him, and puts her hands on his shoulders. She says, “Stiles, look at you,” and her voice sounds tight. Stiles shoots Derek a furtive glance, because what the hell is going on here, and Derek is palming his face, resigned to this. “You are so skinny, look at you.”

“Uh –“

She grabs one of his hands and squeezes it between both of hers, while the rest of the room titters behind them, chatting amongst themselves or moving over to come say hello to Derek. “It’s so nice to have you here,” she tells him, earnest as all hell, like she could only be telling the truth, and Stiles has no clue what to say. Then, unbelievably, her eyes fill with unshed tears and she’s gripping his hand extra hard, like she thinks he’s going to try and free himself, which is a good guess on her part. “…I think that you are so brave to –“

“Mom,” Derek warns her, voice low. “You’re freaking him out.”

“I’m just saying hello,” she challenges, even though she’s openly crying and gripping Stiles like he’s a new born baby she’s going to nurse to health. “We need to feed you immediately. Look at you. All skin and bones.”

“All right that’s…” Derek reaches out and slaps his mother’s hands off of Stiles’, so she relents and finally releases Stiles’ hand from his grasp. “…let me introduce him, for Christ’s sake.” 

She obliges, moving out of the way and wiping at her eyes and sniffling. Stiles is shellshocked by that entire thing still, a tight smile frozen on his face, but Derek is onto pointing people out to him. There’s Cora and Laura, tucked away together and smiling at him benign, drinking wine in pretty party dresses. Then Mary and Heather and Stephanie, who are the younger ones that still live in this house, then Cassie who’s married and has her husband there, and he’s beyond baffled at Stiles’ presence, like he only just got used to the fact that he’s related to Derek Hale and now they’re shoving another celebrity at him and he’s not sure what to do about it. The aunts are there, and Aunt Chrissy is about three sheets to the wind and kisses Stiles on the face, while Aunt Molly, the crazy cat lady, just sits there and regards him like she’s looking for the mark of the devil on him somewhere. The last sister is Isabella, who’s giant. She’s taller than Derek, even, and she’s wearing heels and towers over the rest of the room like a statue, in a velvet dress and dark lipstick. 

In lieu of a greeting, she holds her arm out and says, “check this out,” revealing the words _Free At Last_ in Stiles’ own handwriting, tattooed on her forearm in black. Stiles has been shown tattoos of himself, his work, his own handwriting, thousands of times, but this one feels different. “It changed my life, man,” she tells him this very seriously, so Stiles takes her seriously. 

“Thank you,” he tells her, meeting her gaze. “That means a lot to me.” 

She nods, taking a big sip of wine. Then, she jerks her head at Derek and says, “I will kill my own brother with my bare hands if he fucks this up. Trust me.” 

The other girls laugh and agree, and then they’re all talking over one another again and thrusting wine at Stiles and then pointing to all the appetizers they have laid out on the kitchen island and encouraging him to eat something, _eat some, are you hungry, we have white claws too_ , but Stiles just turns to Derek with big eyes. Derek reads this immediately as Stiles being overwhelmed and desperate to catch his breath, so he waves them all away and wraps his arm around Stiles’ shoulders. 

“We’ll just go get settled in,” he tells them all, much to their evident chagrin. Talia dives at them and puts her arms around their shoulders, guiding them forward towards the stairs and talking a mile a minute as they all head up in a single file line, Talia in the front, Stiles in the middle, Derek in the back. 

“I’ve got everything set up for you guys in Derek’s old room,” she’s saying, as they come up to the landing on the second floor. “All the trundle beds were spoken for so you’re going to have to squeeze together in Derek’s bed, but I figured you wouldn’t mind.” 

They come to a door at the end of the hall, by a big window with pretty red curtains. She pushes it open and guides them inside, and Stiles had not prepared himself for this. Derek hadn’t mentioned that his old bedroom was, like, an old relic, frozen in time – but it is. It’s got posters on the wall, and bedsheets with sharks on them, and bookshelves with Knick knacks and a closet that still has Derek’s teenaged clothes hanging up. His bags from the past few days he’s been staying here are tucked away into the corner neatly, nothing spilling out, like Stiles’ will most likely be the second he puts it down. 

Derek sets Stiles’ backpack down on the ground next to the bed, while his mother keeps talking. “I got some guest towels out here,” she pats a pile of towels on the end of the bed, “and I washed the sheets and tidied up a bit. And I got Stiles a toothbrush in case he forgot his own, it’s in the bathroom,” she points to a shut door to the far left of the room, where the bathroom is likely looming. 

“Thank you,” Stiles tells her, and then she sets her eyes on him and she looks like she might cry again. 

She says, “you’re more than welcome. You know you’re welcome here anytime, any time you need to –“

“Thanks mom,” Derek says with finality, so she takes the hint and sucks in a deep breath. She leaves them to get acquainted with the space, closing the door softly behind her as she goes. Once she’s gone and her heels are vanishing down the hall, Derek turns to him and says, “she gets very emotional around the holidays. It’s even worse this year because she sort of thinks you’re this, like, injured bird that she’s got to care of, you know?”

Stiles definitely got that impression, but he isn’t offended. It’s a nicer reaction than he’d expect anybody to have, after all. He studies the room some more, in all its ancient glory, and he smirks. It’s like eighteen year old Derek got his first part and just left everything behind, here, stuck in a time capsule. His clothes, pictures of him on little league teams, his shark sheets, the green walls, old school books still piled up on the desk in the corner. 

“You know, I would’ve thought you’d bought your mother a big mansion to live in.”

“I offered,” he insists, like it’s a conversation he’s had with her many, many times. “She refused. I guess I get it – this is where she raised all her kids and it’s the house my father bought for her.”

Stiles gets that. When Stiles had told his dad he’d buy him a new house, his dad had scoffed at the sheer idea, because while that house was old and not very big, it was _his_ house. Stiles grew up there and his mother lived there and his dad would not walk away from it, not for the most glamorous house in all the land. 

“I did buy her a lake house. It’s where we go for barbecues and shit like that.” He puts his hands on his hips and regards Stiles, up and down, like he’s assessing for any sign that Stiles is about to make a rope out of Derek’s bed sheets and shimmy down the side of the house to escape. “You doing okay? I know that was a bit much.”

Stiles shrugs. It was beyond a bit much. It was like walking in on a slumber party or something. “It went better than I expected.”

“What were you expecting?”

“Um, to be tarred and feathered, I guess.”

Derek laughs, like it’s silly, and Stiles is being silly. “I told you. They think you’re a tormented genius. They like you more than me, trust me.” 

“Aunt Molly does not like me.”

“Aunt Molly is fucking crazy,” he says, like he wants Stiles to believe it. “I won’t leave you alone with her. She’ll show you pictures of her cats.” 

Stiles smiles, because that’s ridiculous, but from the looks of her, that could only be the truth. “Uh, no, for real. It went better than I thought. Minus your mom crying over me.” 

Derek palms his face again and rolls his eyes. “She’s just…like a serious _mom_ , you know? Everyone who sets foot in this house is her responsibility, like you’re her kid, too. She feels upset about what happened to you. I asked her a dozen times to rein it in, but I think she sort of can’t help it.” 

“It’s all right,” he waves his hand. It’s been a long time since he’s been mothered, anyway, so even though it does sort of make him uncomfortable, he has to admit that it’s…nice. “She’s a very nice person. I see where you get it from.” 

“I’m not nice,” he says, grinning with all his teeth. “I’m an asshole, remember?” 

“Not really,” he shrugs, because he really has no memory of a time Derek was a genuine asshole, not since they’ve known each other. Derek has been nothing but patient. Kind. Thoughtful. Cautious. He is a bit on the nuttier end of the spectrum, but then, Stiles is also fucking crazy, so it all works out, in the end. His eyes catch something familiar, lurking underneath a handful of papers on Derek’s desk, and he lunges at it, clearing the papers away, revealing his own face staring back at him. “A- _ha_!”

It’s Stiles’ first album. The self-titled debut that he wrote when he was still in high school, full of songs about guys he never even fucking thinks about anymore, songs he hasn’t played in years and years.

He waves the thing in Derek’s face and smirks. “More evidence of you pining away for me all these years.” 

Derek does not deny it. He just shrugs and says, “I used to listen to that shit all the time.” 

Stiles opens the jewel case and pulls the album booklet out, holding it in his hands, reverent, delicately turning the pages. “Christ, look at how young I was.”

“Yeah.”

He looks fresh faced, innocent, naïve, and stupid. The pictures are low budget, but he stares at them, at himself, and he sighs through his nose. “Oh, young Stiles. There’s so much to warn you about, but tragically, I cannot.” 

Derek takes the CD and the booklet away, putting them all back together and setting it back down on the desk. He meets Stiles’ eyes and smiles, taking Stiles by his chin and cocking his head to the side. “I love you, you know.” 

Stiles isn’t used to hearing this just because. He’s used to hearing it to get things out of him, or to get him to do something, or to manipulate him. But Derek just says this, all the time now, out of the clear blue sky, and it always makes Stiles blush and look away, because he’s just not sure how to handle love without strings. 

“Do you ever wish you had met me before?” Stiles asks him, and Derek makes a face, like he’s confused by that question. “Like, around Free At Last. When I was younger and not so shitty and none of those bad things had happened so I wasn’t a head case, and I was just…better. Do you ever…?”

“No,” he says, emphatic. “No, I never for one second wish that, Stiles.”

Stiles looks at the floor. “But I was so much more, like, worthy of love, then.”

“Who says you’re not worthy of love, now?”

Thousands of people, every day, across every single corner of social media, across every channel on television, in ads, on the radio, everywhere. They think he’s used up, even more so now that they know what’s happened to him. You cannot love a used up, broken, alcoholic, piece of garbage. That’s what they all say. 

Derek takes Stiles by his shoulders and holds him there, so he has no choice but to meet Derek’s eyes. “Stiles, I do not love you _in spite_ of all that shit that’s happened in the past few years. I love you _with_ all of that shit. That’s the deal.”

Stiles needs to get used to hearing it, he guesses. Part of him still tries to resist it, to pull away, to tell Derek to stop, he doesn’t deserve it, can’t Derek just hit him and get it over with? But he does his best to squash that part of him down, to smother it, so it grows smaller, every single day. “Well, I love you even though you punched a hole in someone’s car, so we’re even.” 

They go back downstairs where everyone has gathered in the living room. He gets handed cookies and wine and is sat down on the couch next to Derek, while everyone sits around and talks, and the food cooks in the oven. The Hales are a rag tag bunch, wherein some of them are over the top, extroverted to the extreme, talking over everyone else to be heard like Stephanie and Heather, while some are more reserved, sitting and watching and only commenting when it’s necessary for them to say anything, like Cora and Derek. Stiles just watches and keeps to himself, eating what’s put in front of him and trying not to take up too much space. 

Derek excuses himself to the restroom at one point, leaving an empty space next to Stiles on the couch. Stiles figured it would only be a matter of time before one of the girls leapt at the opportunity to sit next to him, like Heather, who has a crush on him and keeps staring at him whenever she thinks he’s not looking, or Isabella, or even Talia – but it’s Cora who winds up coming over.

She smooths the back of her dress out as she sits, and then crosses her ankles in front of her. “Hi, Stiles.”

“Hey, Cora,” he sips his wine. “You look pretty.”

She blushes a bit, and then she smiles. “Are you excited for your Grammy nominations?”

“Oh, those,” he shrugs, drinking some more. Truthfully, the sheer mention of them makes his head hurt, but he doesn’t want to be rude to her, so he just nods and shrugs some more. She’s intuitive, so she reads this gesture for what it is, as avoidance. 

“I think you deserved it. I mean, I know I’m biased, especially now,” she gestures around the room, because here Stiles is, in her home, with her brother, home for Christmas. “…the album was incredible. You really…you made something other people couldn’t.”

“Well, other people should get abused, then they could make it, too, because it’s not that special. To tell you the truth, I think it’s the saddest piece of shit I’ve ever made, and they’re only nominating me so they can pat themselves on the back for being nice to the resident abuse victim.”

Cora seems taken aback by his tone, his posture, the words he’s saying, because she has only ever really known or spoken to the Stiles who’s trying to be charming and nice. She’s never met the real him, who’s…horrible. But she pushes forward, furrowing her brow and shaking her head, “you only say that because you see it as like, this…memento, of what happened to you, instead of what it really is.”

“Which is what?”

“A piece of art that reaches people, you know? You think people only loved Nashville because they like when you’re hurt. People loved Nashville because it resonates with them,” she observes him, up and down, “you’re going to go, aren’t you?”

“To…?”

“The Grammy’s.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he looks away, being evasive, and she’s perceptive. She narrows her eyes and huffs a bit, shaking her head. 

“It seems to me like not allowing yourself to be rewarded for your work is some weird form of self-punishment.” It’s the last thing she’s able to say before Derek comes back into the room. She stands up immediately, leaving room for Derek to sit, and just walks away to her original seat next to Laura, without glancing over her shoulder at him once. 

Derek sits next to him and seems perplexed. He says, “what was she saying to you?”

Stiles figures if he tells Derek the truth, that Cora was sort of badgering him about going to the grammy’s, he’d get upset with her and it would cause an entire thing. He shrugs, instead, and bites into a cookie instead of answering that. Truthfully, what Cora had said sits in his head for the rest of the night, even as they’re sitting at the dinner table eating with Christmas music playing over their heads. It’s all he can think about. 

Is not going just his own way of believing he doesn’t deserve any kind of award? Is not going just some other twisted way that Matt wins? Lydia is under the impression that Stiles is going to clean house at that stupid fucking awards show, and she usually is right about these things, and part of Stiles just knows. They’re going to bestow those awards upon him like he’s a god, because fuck it, maybe he is. 

Maybe he is. Matt had spent their entire relationship breaking him down and making him smaller, smaller, smaller still, until he believed he was worthy of nothing, not even love, until he believed he deserved nothing, not even credit or recognition for his work, until he believed his work was garbage, not worth fighting for, until Stiles was willing to just let the label take all of it. 

Is he going to keep the cycle going, or is he finally going to stop it? 

After dinner, they all go back to the living room and Talia says they should all open one present, as is their Christmas Eve tradition, so Stiles settles into the couch next to Derek and just watches. They’re all animals about ripping the paper off and sending it flying across the floor, so it’s entertaining to see it. There doesn’t seem to be a single tomboy among the Hale women, so all the presents are things like makeup, shoes, handbags, clothing, all in a sea of pink and purple and glitter that spills across the floor and everywhere else like a disease. It’s a wonder Derek didn’t go insane growing up with this much feminine energy around him at all times, but then Stiles thinks that’s probably why he is the way he is. 

He’s this big chocolate ball with a hard candy coating. Stiles feels immensely fond of him, and maybe it’s just that he’s surrounded by Christmas lights which always makes him happy, or maybe it’s the wine, or the fact that everyone in this room is so giddy and excited, and it’s infectious, but it doesn’t matter. 

Stiles figured there wouldn’t be anything for him to open at the Hale house, so when it gets to be his turn after Derek opens his own, he just drinks his drink and expects nothing from anyone. He had gotten Derek presents, yes, but he wasn’t sure if Derek had gotten him anything, and he didn’t want to put any pressure on Derek by shoving presents at him in front of his entire family, so he left them at home. 

To Stiles’ surprise, Derek turns to him and says, “it’s your turn,” with this mischievous glint in his eyes. Stiles blinks at looks around the room to find that they’re all staring at him and smirking, like they all know exactly what the present is because Derek had told them all, and are now waiting in anticipation for Stiles to see it and open it. 

He says, “I left your presents back at my dad’s house,” in a hurried whisper, but Derek waves him off. 

“I know,” he stands, grinning from ear to ear, and vanishes down the hall to the closet at the end of it. Stiles watches him step all the way in, digging around in the back until he gets his hands on something. He steps out, and even from all the way on the couch, even though Derek is just a silhouette in the dark, from the shape of it alone, Stiles can see what it is. 

It’s a hard present to wrap, so it’s just got a big red bow on it, and it billows a bit as Derek brings it into the living room, so it’s finally out in the light, and Stiles sits and stares at it. It’s a guitar, an electric guitar, a Fender, and Derek holds it by the neck as he brings it over to Stiles and offers it to him, smiling. It’s chrome, shiny, brand new, and as the light catches it, Stiles can see that it’s iridescent, a rainbow sheen glowing across it. 

Stiles puts his glass of wine down on the end table beside the couch, reaching out with both hands to grab the thing and take it, wrap his arms around it. No one has ever bought him a guitar before. Stiles thinks about all the times that Derek was backstage, seeing Stiles’ fleet of guitars being moved around, and those were just the few he was using on this particular tour. Derek has never seen Stiles’ entire collection, only bits and pieces of it, but he’s seen the few in New York, and the handful in Malibu, and the one he brought along with him to Vancouver, and he knows that Stiles used to never go anywhere, nowhere, absolutely nowhere, without a guitar. 

He cradles it against his body and sighs, overwhelmed. No one has ever dared to buy him a guitar before. He already has so many – but that’s not the point. It’s an expensive guitar, but a few thousand dollars is penny change to Derek, and to Stiles too, but the cost also isn’t the point. 

He thinks about how Matt smashed one of Stiles’ most beloved guitars on the ground one night even as Stiles begged him to calm down, to please not break his guitar, how much he fucking hated when Stiles made music, thought about music, did what he loved the most. Now, here’s Derek, handing him a brand new shiny guitar that he picked out himself, because Stiles loves guitars. 

It’s not about the cost, how many he already has, the brand, the color, any of it. It’s about the gesture. Now, Stiles has a guitar in his collection that represents Derek. He has a guitar that every time he touches it, he’ll think about Derek. 

“Do you like it?” Derek asks him, and Stiles nods. Fervently, he nods, again and again, because his throat is tight, and he doesn’t think he can speak. He touches it, reverent, feeling the strings under his fingers, the knobs, the neck, the body. “Look, I even got you a new strap,” he says, picking the thing up itself as evidence – it’s shiny like the guitar itself, unlike anything Stiles already owns, and Stiles nods, because he likes that, too. “Do you like it?” He asks this again, a slight laugh in his tone, because Stiles had said nothing, not a word, since he brought the thing out. 

The girls are all tittering because they can tell he likes it, and likes it a lot, and wow, what a grand romantic gesture, that Derek went out of his way to go buy something for Stiles. Something he knows dick-all about. He probably had to go into the store and be talked through picking this thing out with the sales guy, probably stood there scratching his head because he has no fucking clue what a tremolo is, what a pickup is, any of it. 

Before Stiles knows it, he’s crying. It’s quick – one second he’s cradling his new guitar and the next, he’s crying. It sneaks up on him, because it has been so long since he’s cried over something that wasn’t pain, wasn’t hurt, wasn’t pulled out of him by someone’s words or someone beating him. It comes organically, out of him alone, because he’s so…happy. He hasn’t cried over being happy in so long it feels foreign, and also, he’s in front of a ton of people and this is embarrassing. 

They do not laugh at him. They’re excited for him, because he likes his present, clapping and smiling. He swipes at his face to remove the evidence and sniffles, shaking his head like he’s being ridiculous, but Derek is smiling at him. He says, “baby,” all soft and gentle, squatting down in front of him so they’re at eye level. 

“I love it,” Stiles tells him, wiping at his face some more, “I love it, I love it, words cannot express.” He hugs it against himself and smiles, so Derek smiles at him even bigger than before. “It’s shiny.”

“Well, you already had every other color under the sun, I figured I’d get you the rainbow one.” 

It’s completely not in line with any of Stiles’ previous albums, to have an iridescent rainbow guitar. He has no idea how this guitar fits into his image at all, or if it does, but it does not matter. He’s going to play it. Obsessively. Next tour, he’s using this guitar exclusively. Whether it matches or not, who cares? Something about this moment, sitting in Derek Hale’s mother’s living room clutching a brand new guitar that glitters in the Christmas lights, makes him feel like his life has done a complete 180, from the last Christmas he had. 

Alone. In Malibu. Drinking. Dreading the album’s release. Puking in his toilet at midnight because he ate too much chocolate and paired it with bourbon and nothing else. 

But it’s not just Christmas. It’s his entire life, every piece of it, radically changed. And he knows that it’s not all because of Derek, because people are not band-aids, and that’s not how life works. He knows that it’s because Stiles worked, and he crawled on his hands and knees, to become a person again. To become someone else, not that fucking person Stiles couldn’t even stand to look at in the mirror. He did the tour, and he thought he was going to die, but he didn’t. He played the songs and he took pictures with fans and he even went back to Nashville. He even went back to _fucking_ Nashville. 

And he told everyone what happened to him. He ran away immediately after, yes, but he did it. It was not easy. Not one single part of it was easy. 

Stiles cannot stand the thought of leaving his guitar downstairs, so he insists on bringing it up to bed with them, even though it will only sit in the corner, not being played at all. He stares at it from the doorway as he brushes his teeth with the toothbrush Talia bought for him, stares at it as he strips down to his underwear, as Derek talks to him about what’s going to happen in the morning. 

He doesn’t think he’s been so obsessed with a guitar since the very first one his dad got for him when he was a kid. Man, he played that fucking thing until it literally fell apart, and he, no joke, had a funeral for it in the backyard, where it is still buried in pieces. That’s how much he loves his new guitar, too. Like it’s a member of the god damn family. 

They climb into bed together and Derek’s mother was right. It is not big enough for two grown men, but they make it work, pressing against each other’s bodies and staring at one another on the pillow. “You like your present,” Derek says, smirking. 

“Like is an understatement. If it were possible to make love to an inanimate object, that would be the one, my friend.” 

“How about making love to the person who bought you the inanimate object?”

Stiles laughs, reading that as a joke – he scrunches his nose up and moves to burrow into Derek’s chest, but Derek stops him. He takes Stiles by his chin and leans in for a kiss, but Stiles guffaws and pulls away, shocked. “You were serious?”

Derek blinks. “Why not?”

“You wanna have _sex_ with me?” His voice goes shrill, a panicked whisper. “In your kid bedroom? With your _mother_ down the hall?”

“You’ll just have to be quiet, for once.”

“No, we can’t,” he pushes Derek away, and Derek laughs. “Derek. Your sisters will hear. It’s too humiliating for me to bear.” 

“I used to jerk off in this bed every single night for eight years,” he says. “They never heard a thing. Trust me.”

Stiles bites his lip, because there is very rarely ever a time when he does not want to have sex with Derek. He is, after all, the zombie killing guy from Dead By Sunrise, which instantly makes him fuckable on about ten different levels – and beyond that, he is hot. Like, Stiles could bake a dozen cookies on his abs hot. As soon as they got to Vancouver, they were fucking like rabbits, all over his house. In the upstairs shower, in the downstairs shower, in the kitchen, in the living room, in the bedroom, on and on. They’re still not tired of doing it. 

“But what if they do hear?”

“What if?” He raises his eyebrows in challenge. “You know, I’ve jerked off to the thought of you in this bed, before.”

“Oh, _what_?”

“Yup,” he nods, grinning. “To pictures from that CD you were looking at earlier.”

“Oh, yuck. Those pictures aren’t even sexy like, at all, Derek.”

“I was a nineteen year old boy. Looking at pretty much anything could get me going,” he leans in and kisses Stiles on the neck, in just the right spot, so Stiles’ breath catches and he bites his lip again. “I used to fantasize about how you’d fall in love with me and write songs about me and then we’d fuck, obviously.” 

Stiles looks at him, and a slow smile spreads across his face. “You’re serious.”

“Yes,” he insists, deadass. “I have absolutely scorched my dick, thinking about being inside of you. In this bed.” 

Stiles’ dick twitches. There is nothing quite like the way that Derek wants him. It’s this organic honest want, that comes from nowhere else but Derek’s deep desire to fuck Stiles into oblivion. Not about the money, or the fame, or any of that. Just the carnal desire and attraction. It makes Stiles hard just to think of it, to think of Derek in this room staring at that CD and jerking off to it. 

“Okay,” he agrees, and Derek immediately reaches over Stiles’ body to the bedside table, pulling out a bottle of lube that has likely been there since he was fourteen years old. Stiles snickers when he sees it, but Derek is serious, slathering his fingers up with one hand and tugging on the waistband of Stiles underwear with the other. Stiles obliges, sliding them off and then tossing them to the side on the ground. 

He wastes no time in fingering Stiles; two fingers first, working quickly, leaning up to kiss Stiles on the mouth and then locking eyes with him. He says, “you’ve gotta be quiet,” as a reminder, and Stiles nods. He knows he has to be quiet. Him and being quiet during sex don’t necessarily mix, but he can try, at least. 

Derek sets Stiles up on his back, with his head on the pillows, and Stiles hitches his legs back, opening them up, so Derek can climb right on top of him. He lines himself up, and then pushes in slowly, leaning his body over Stiles’ – Stiles presses his heels into Derek’s thighs, reaches up and touches Derek’s chest, smoothing them over the hard skin, panting. 

Derek goes slow. He presses his hands into the bed beside Stiles’ head and they meet each other’s eyes, as Derek pulls in, and out, again and again. Stiles bites his lip and then has to surge up to press his lips against Derek’s, to keep himself from being too loud, so then his moan is swallowed up into Derek’s mouth, softer and quieter as Derek kisses him. 

He pauses for a moment, adjusting himself a bit, so Stiles has to widen his legs as Derek straightens up. “You okay?” He asks, breathy. 

“Fine,” he answers. “Just – it’s hard to not –“

“Yeah,” Derek agrees, like he knows, even though he doesn’t. He, for one, is not loud in bed. He moves some more, and Stiles scrabbles his hands against Derek’s chest, reaching up and cradling his face in both of his palms, squeezing his eyes shut and whining. “Oh, fuck, you’re so hot.”

“I wanna scream so bad right now,” he whispers, fumbling his hands into Derek’s skin mindlessly. “I can’t be quiet, I can’t, I can’t…”

Derek leans back over Stiles’ body, so their faces are close, pushing himself in all the way, all the fucking way, so Derek’s pubic hair tickles his own skin. Stiles opens his mouth to let a cry spill out, but Derek kisses him just in time, so it goes down Derek’s throat instead of into the open air. When he pulls away, he’s smirking, like he’s enjoying this – likely, he is. Stiles is used to fucking and not giving a shit if people hear him or not, because he’s Stiles Stilinski and everyone knows he’s a massive slut anyway. He has never been in a scenario where he’s been fucking someone and he had to be quiet. When he’d fuck guys in high school, he’d just wait until his dad was out of the house and have them climb in through his windows. When he was living with Scott, briefly, at the start of his career, he just didn’t give a shit if Scott heard him or not. 

Now here he is. In Derek’s mother’s house. And he is having a hard fucking time, because he has never had to try to be quiet before. 

Derek bears down over him, gets the angle right, and fucks him. It’s quick, hard thrusts, so the bed shakes, the wall rattling a bit, and Stiles keens. He can’t help it. He slaps his hands over his mouth as his body jerks, as Derek mercilessly hits the right spot, again and again – whimpers and cries spill from between the cracks in his fingers, his eyes screwing shut, because he knows if he looks at Derek while getting fucked this good he’s going to come. Loudly. 

Derek stops, again, probably just to prolong this even more. He breathes out, “fuck,” and then breathes back in. “I love you,” he says, pulling Stiles’ hands away so they can kiss. Quick pecks, open mouthed, breathy kisses. “I love you so fucking much, baby, I love you.”

“I love you,” Stiles says back, immediate. “I can’t be quiet. I’m going to scream.”

“Shhh,” Derek presses a finger to his lips and grins. “You’re okay.” He moves again, making Stiles cry out and then turn to bury his face in the pillows. “Christ, you’re so fucking sexy.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying this,” he says, muffled by the fabric. 

“So are you.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

Derek adjusts himself, into a better angle with better leverage, so he can finish. Stiles can tell just from the way his face goes serious that he’s trying to finish – he fucks into him, hard, hard enough that Stiles gasps and bites his lips to keep from moaning. It doesn’t really help. Derek keeps going, that same speed, that same strength, and Stiles almost lets loose. 

Derek slaps a big, sweaty hand over Stiles’ mouth. He keeps going, Stiles’ noises muffled by his own hand, the bed shaking, until he finishes. He pounds his orgasm into Stiles’ body, and Stiles wonders if he’s thinking about all the times he imagined doing this, in the past. In this exact fucking bed. Stiles wonders if it’s as good as he imagined it would be. 

Or, maybe better. Stiles knows he’s hot. He had forgotten for a while, but now he remembers, he’s as hot as Derek says that he is. It’s nice to feel that way again. 

Stiles is still hard, because it’s pretty difficult to allow an orgasm to come when you’re focusing so much energy on something else – like trying to be quiet. Derek pulls out of him and pats him on the belly a couple of times, an exhausted smile on his face. He’s whispering when he says, “I’ll make you come, but you have to be quieter.”

“I can’t,” Stiles insists, shaking his head against the pillow. “I can’t, for real. I don’t know how. I’m a slut, sluts can’t be quiet, don’t you know that?” 

“Jesus Christ,” Derek laughs, running his hands up and down Stiles’ bare legs affectionately. “So, you don’t want to come.”

“I didn’t say that,” he yell-whispers, sitting up onto his elbows. 

“So, you’ll be quiet.”

“Derek,” Stiles hisses, narrowing his eyes. “I’m going to remember this. I’m never going to forget it. And someday, I’m going to torment you like this, and you’re going to be sorry.” 

“I doubt that, but all right,” he smirks some more, while Stiles frantically hefts himself up, turning so he’s on his hands and knees, pressing his face down into the pillows. 

His voice is barely audible when he says, “okay. I’m ready.” 

“Okay,” Derek agrees. Two big hands are on Stiles’ backside, as Derek knees his way up onto the bed behind him. There’s a pause, maybe just Derek thinking about what he wants to do to him, which is torturous, absolutely the meanest thing Derek has ever done to him, and then there’s a wet, slick hand on Stiles’ dick. 

It’s just a fucking handjob. A reacharound, at that. But something about the fact that he cannot make any noise just makes him want to….start yelling and screaming. At the top of his lungs. 

“I’m going to scream,” he says for the twentieth time since they started, and Derek strokes him harder. Faster, more fervently, so Stiles digs his face as deep down into the pillows as he can get, practically eating the fucking things, pounding his fist onto the mattress. 

Derek stops, almost right before Stiles is about to come. “You’re so fucking loud, holy shit, I’ve never really noticed before. I mean, I noticed. But this is…”

“I need to come,” he barks, and Derek fumbles to comply, hearing the no-nonsense in Stiles’ tone. He grabs onto Stiles’ dick and pumps it, aggressive, leaving Stiles in a whimpering, slobbering mess in the pillows. 

When he finally does come, he can’t help it. He makes good on his promise to scream, because it spills out of him like water, immediate and fast, as he comes onto the sheets Derek’s mother washed for them. Immediately after it’s over, he sits up, pulling his face out of the pillows, and looks at Derek. In a quiet whisper he asks, “you think anyone heard that?”

Derek is fighting a smile off of his face, but he’s failing. He says, “um…yes. I definitely think someone heard that.”

Stiles flops back down onto the bed and covers his face with his hands. It’s red, beet red, and hot to the touch. “Oh, I’m so embarrassed,” he mutters, and Derek laughs and pats him on the back. “This is so embarrassing. I can’t help it. I’m terrible. I’m like the porn star who doesn’t know how to shut it off when she gets home.” 

“I enjoy it,” Derek tells him, settling down beside him. “Come on. If anyone heard it, it was probably Laura, and she’s probably…well. She’s probably laughing.”

Stiles burrows deeper in to the bed.

After a few moments of silence, Derek clears his throat. He says, “baby, come here,” and wraps his hands around Stiles’ waist. He pulls him up, back into the position they started in – facing one another with their heads on the pillows, close, because the bed is so small, they don’t have a choice. “I love you,” he repeats, leaning forward to kiss Stiles on the nose. “Even though you can’t shut up.”

Stiles blushes again, but he decides to not let himself be too embarrassed. So, Laura probably heard him getting fucked by her own brother. Big deal. She’s probably heard much worse things coming from this side of the hallway, Stiles would bet money on that. 

“You like your present?” He asks again, even though he knows Stiles fucking likes his present.

Stiles nods. “Yeah. It’s…no one’s ever gotten me a guitar before.”

“Really?” He’s surprised. “That’s weird. You love guitars.” 

That, Stiles does. They lay in quiet for a little while. Derek’s eyes start to close, and he’s going still, hands wrapped around Stiles’ body. Stiles watches him for a while, breathing in and out, and he’s happy, again. 

It comes and goes. But he’s not a miserable piece of shit anymore, at least. 

“Derek,” he says, and Derek opens his eyes and blinks blearily at him. “I think I’m…I think I’m gonna go. To the Grammy’s.” 

“That’s great,” he smiles at him, genuine and true. 

“And I think I’m gonna make another record and meet the deadline and then…and then try to get my music back, but I wanna sign to someone else.” 

“That’s great,” he repeats, smile going bigger. 

“I had this fantasy for a long time where I, like, made The Standing Dead and then just disappeared and fucked off on the contract and let them take everything, my money, my music, all of it, and just…vanished into the woods somewhere, never to be seen again. I thought that was the only way to ever be happy again.” He turns and stares up at the ceiling. There are glow in the dark stars up there, from years and years ago. “That’s not how you fix things.”

“No,” Derek agrees sleepily. “It isn’t.”

“I think I’m going to call the producer I worked with for Free At Last and work with her again. That’s your favorite album.”

“So?”

“So. This one’s probably going to be mostly about you, so I may as well make sure you like it.”

“Me?” He grins, ear to ear, eyes closed, half asleep. 

“And this shitstorm of a tour. Just…making things, it’s what I do. I couldn’t live with myself if I wasn’t creating, you know?”

Derek pats him on the stomach, but he’s almost completely asleep, by now. Seconds later, he’s snoring, right into Stiles’ face, but Stiles doesn’t mind. He turns and looks back up at the glow in the dark stars again, and he drums his fingers on his bare chest. 

Yeah. He has another album in him already. He can have it finished well before the deadline, if he starts right after the Grammy’s and after Derek’s movie premiere. He’ll have it done and polished up. He’ll go on the fucking tour and do press and he’ll do it all with a smile on his face, and he will likely have to stand there and endure countless questions about Matt Harding, even in spite of Lydia screaming at people to under no circumstances bring him up ever again. 

There are other labels who have been hounding him, because they know his contract is almost up. He’ll go to meetings with them and he’ll sign with one of them and his current label will go apeshit on him, he knows that, but fuck it. 

They can eat shit, for all he cares. 

He does not know what’s going to happen to Matt. There’s this part of him that’s desperate to know, because he has to know, because the chapter will always feel unfinished until he knows that Matt will never be able to hurt him again. But then Stiles remembers that Matt…really can’t hurt him, anymore. 

Stiles has Derek. And Derek would rip Matt limb from limb if he ever came near Stiles again, Stiles is certain of it. Stiles doesn’t have nobody anymore, like Matt succeeded in doing the first time. Stiles has his friends, and Derek, and Derek’s family, and these are all people who care about him, and they won’t let it happen again. 

It will never happen again. Stiles realizes this by himself, staring up at Derek Hale’s childhood bedroom ceiling, and the glow stars, and he smiles. It will never, ever happen to him again. Free at last. 

Fucking free at god damn last.


End file.
